Aaah, yes, it appears we have reached my favorite time of the year: monsoon season. While I go into it every year with anticipation, come mid-August I’m sick of the heat, the (relative to everywhere else) humidity, and, most especially, the dust. But we’ve had such a dry winter, I’m just hoping this year we get some thunderstorms that do more than just blow up dust and produce a brief downpour.

Here is what the morning Channel 3 weather forecast at AZFamily.com had to say:

…Dewpoints have risen dramatically over the last 24 hours thanks to a surge of moisture coming up from the Gulf of California. No storms are expected in the Valley today, but that could change in the next day or two.

As a trough of low pressure moves through the West over the next few days, Arizona will come under the influence of a southerly flow, which will draw moisture into the state. That will lead to some showers and thunderstorms today in the higher elevations of Eastern Arizona, with more widespread activity expected Friday.

On Friday, there’s a slight chance we could get some storm activity in the Valley. It’s about a 20 percent chance, and the best chance with any thunderstorms near the Valley will be not for rain, but for gusty outflow winds and blowing dust.

There’s really nothing like the localized storms you get here in the Valley of the Sun during monsoon season. Whereas, say, back home in New England where the thunderstorms are typically associated with a front that blows through, here you get these pop-up storms that can vary in intensity as little as a mile away. Last year there was a storm that for us blew some wind and rain around, but in the adjoining subdivision a microburst or straight-line winds took down more than a dozen trees, some of them big mesquites. We hope for nothing like that extreme this year, but some storms that produce a night or two or three of soaking rains would be welcome.