It’s a little before 11 PM tonight and the house is still. Like in, really still. Tracey’s asleep on the couch, the rabbits have been fed and attended to, and are in their normal busy nighttime regimens (eating hay, chewing grass mats, vegging out, etc.), and I’m here nursing a cold Sammy Octoberfest and enjoying the fall-like weather that came upon us so unexpectedly after a a violent day weather-wise.

I’ll have some photos on my Monday post, but today we had a series of thunderstorms that really lived up to the Arizona monsoon season hype. What changes weather-wise throughout the day! It started out hot and relatively dry, then the humidity started to build, followed by cloud formations to the southwest. At 4:30 PM we had a dust storm blow in, followed by some heavy rain and, upon leaving, the heaviest humidity I think I’ve ever experienced here in Arizona. I mean, just being out for ten minutes and every bit of clothing on my body was drenched. Very unusual for around here.

When the clouds started building to the southwest, you just knew someone was going to get blasted. Severe thunderstorm warnings were everywhere. As it turned out we didn’t take a direct hit, but it was heavy enough to blow screens off of our next-door neighbor’s windows and down a good-sized Palo Verdes tree the next block over.

As the storm rumbled off to the northeast there were reports of nickel-sized hail, chaos, and extensive tree damage. For us, it was an unforgettable dusk complete with every pastel color imaginable, including a double rainbow and sea-green clouds immersed in lightning I’ve never seen before. The storm sucked every ounce of humidty out of the atmosphere, to the point where tonight I took a gorgeous swim in 89-degree water with the air temp at 84 going down to 78 and lightning still filling the skies to the northeast.

It was a beautiful breezy night for a walk, so, beer in hand, I took a walk over to the next block where a chipper was making fast work of the downed Palo Verde. The air was full of that beautiful and uniquely musky scent of Texas sage in the air you get after any kind of rain, and I thanked God for being able to walk barefoot and in shorts around a quiet neighborhood with lightning flashing in the distance and a cool breeze blowing across my face. As a New Englander, I hate Arizona, but there’s a part of me that has come to love and accept it for what it is as well. Tonight’s sunset and moonlight swim I hope I’ll never forget.