Back to Arizona. Back to the Valley of the Sun. Out of the lovely, clean air of a summer in the Northeast and into the withering murk of a monsoon week in Arizona. Rather than the bright and blazing heat of the past two weeks, the monsoon brings with it an uptick in the humidity, so rather than 115 and blistering hot you get 106 and humid. By the time mid-afternoon comes around everything seems washed out and wilted, much like the Red Sox pitching is whenever Clay Buchholz or Eduardo Rodriguez are starting.

We had our first monsoon storm last night. The clouds to our east were piled up and salmon-colored against the setting sun, but I really didn’t think we were going to get anything until I saw a couple of flashes to the east around 9 PM while walking back from the mailbox. Dutifully checking the Accuweather website I saw we had a blowing dust advisory in effect, so I poured me a chilled Pinot Grigio and went out on the pool deck to watch the storm come in. The lightning got a little closer and a breeze came up, but I don’t think we had much dust. All of a sudden there were two flashes of lightning right overhead and the first cracks of thunder. And then the rain started, and what a joy it was to behold! We got a real soaker – the first rain in 3 1/2 months for a good fifteen minutes. The temperature dropped some ten degrees to around 90, and I could hear all our neighbors out on their patios enjoying the spectacle.

You can always tell when the rain is about to stop and the storm about to move on. You’re drinking in the (relatively) cool air when all of a sudden you feel that first sickening wave of humidity return. Five minutes later it’s all over and the air becomes wet-blanket heavy, almost suffocating. Then half an hour later all the hard surfaces are dry and it’s like the storm never happened.

I went to bed.