They say in New England that if you don’t like the weather wait a minute, but that’s hardly the case out here in Arizona. Yet, every once in a while Mother Nature will toss a curve ball that even the most experienced weather folk out here can’t handle. Consider earlier this week: after our weekend of record high temperatures, the coast looked clear all the way to December. The monsoon season was over, before us just an endless stream of sunny and hot days leading towards the start of “Arizona winter” in a few weeks.

Then all of a sudden, things change.

I first noticed it this morning, lying in bed listening to the classical music station I refuse to pledge a nickel to. What was that? It was the sound of the wind chimes out back – very strange, any kind of wind in the morning. So I get up and walk out back, and what do I see? Raindrops falling through a gloriously shimmering morning sun cloud. I mean, it was gorgeous to behold. Not a lot of rain, mind you, just a few drips here and there.

And that’s when I noticed the humidity. ‘Where the heck is this coming from?’, I asked myself. When I didn’t respond to my own question (very unusual, for sure), I went to the computer and brought up trusty old Accuweather.com, and sure enough, we’ve got special weather statements all over the place. I mean, who knew?

Turns out there are three systems influencing our weather that no one picked up on earlier in the week: moisture left over from the remnants of Hurricane Karl from a week ago pushing northward, combining with disintegrating Tropical Storm Georgette in the Gulf of California, both to be pushed northward by a Pacific system moving inward to the north of us. It’s like a early winter system, but with monsoon characteristics. We had a baby thunderstorm tonight; they’re predicting nearly an inch of rain between now and end of day Wednesday. I sure hope they’re right.

Here in the Valley of the Sun we don’t care why it’s happening, we’re just glad that it is happening – after all, with this winter promising to be a La Nina (meaning drier and warmer conditions than usual) rainfall will be hard to come by.

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Speaking of weather, yesterday was the anniverary of the Great Hurricane of 1938. Be sure to check the movie embedded within this link – you may need to download QuickTime for Windows, but it’s worth it. My mom remembers it as a girl, and the book “A Wind To Shake The World” tells an unbelievably horrific account of the storm.

But nothing like that here, although, like the Joe Cocker tune goes, I can stand a little rain.

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Pool temp: 84 degrees