The monsoon

'It's a dry heat!'

It was a comment we heard countless times before reaching Arizona at the onset of the summer. As if that makes up for 115 degrees. But, still, somewhere in my brain it was a sort of consolation. At least I wouldn't sweat that much, even if I was warm. Or so I told myself.

As a quick aside I've humorously learned that this saying is also oft repeated here in the desert. For one example I found it on one of my brother-in-laws t-shirts, as a joke. I'm likening it to how people in the upper Midwest talk about the wind.

When we came back to Minnesota (and Wisconsin) mid July for a week, after six weeks in Arizona, I enjoyed the humidity there. More and more I've decided that when you're outside in the Phoenix summer, especially in the afternoons or really anytime the sun is shining on you, it's like you're baking in an oven. It feels like death. At least when you're sweating because of the moisture in the air, thick or no, there's life. I still feel alive. The Arizona heat is so oppressive and unbearable. And that's when it's still mostly dry.

I had heard that, somehow, it gets worse than June and early July. I was somewhat skeptical but figured that was probably right. The dog days are August after all. What I didn't know was that there's a brief time here where it's both well into the triple digits and humid.

Here they call it the monsoon season, or simply 'the monsoon.' I laughed the first time I heard the term but that was as someone who hadn't lived it. Of course it must rain here sometimes. It turns out that starting in June and through July, or maybe into early August, the moisture in the air, the humidity, builds up gradually. Then there's like a couple week period where rain is more regular, there are actual thunderstorms, plus the occasional dust storm ('haboob' - we've experienced one of these now). It's mid summer in the desert so except, maybe, the morning after rain it's still extremely hot, 110+ regularly, and then the dew point is a whole lot higher than you'd guess as well.

A haboob, from NatGeo

In trying to speak more intelligently on humidity I've done some learning on dew point and humidity percentage, two numerical ways this is measured. The dew point is the temperature at which the air would be saturated, or filled, with water. A higher dew point simply means there's more water in the air. But the actual temperature outside is important too. When we calculate relative humidity we're dividing the actual water vapor pressure outside by the saturation vapor pressure of the temperature outside. A higher temperature provides more capacity for water in the air. So, because the temperature is much higher here in the desert the relative humidity calculation is still going to result in a lower percentage. But that doesn't mean there isn't a fair amount of moisture, and it doesn't get humid. In the winter and early spring the average dew points in Phoenix are very low, in the 30s. In July and August this rises to near 60. But obviously during the day and at absolute peak monsoon it's even higher. I caught it at 71 last week, 66 yesterday, and, boy, that's something.

What I'm trying to say is the monsoon is real and it's pretty awful. 115 with moisture, ugh, I don't feel alive with that. Outside has indeed gotten worse, though we've seemingly crested. I do kinda like commiserating with the locals about the heat for once, instead of the cold (or wind). This time of year is the worst we've experienced thus far and it's generally regarded as such. We see it in (K-12) school starting already, playgrounds getting shut down, more things I would've never thought of that are done very differently here. I want to add that in my parents house basically all the doors don't fit in their frames right now, we're assuming because of some kind of expansion. It's even hard to sleep inside, with the AC, because of the sweat, the stick. Fun stuff.

Put even shorter, this is basically the life of Arizonians in the summer. And us, this go round.