Blog: Arizona’s summer monsoons – It can get wild and wooly, so let’s all be aware
Monsoon Awareness Week – the annual effort by state, local and federal agencies to prepare the public for these awesome, often dangerously powerful storm patterns – is nearly upon us. As for the monsoon storms themselves? Well, they will arrive. Eventually. Maybe later than usual this year. But, nevertheless, the message remains: Be prepared. Oh, sure, they make some fun of our appropriation of the term “monsoon” in India where rainfall at the peak of the summer monsoon season in June and July averages 16-20 inches and where one uniquely situated village averages 107 inches in July alone. But the often fierce winds driving moisture from the Mexican tropics into our arid Sonoran Desert region have a character and power of their own.