There’s a particular kind of impatience that sets in around this time of year and anyone who’s spent a summer in the high desert knows it well. It starts in late June, when the heat settles in like a houseguest who’s stayed an hour past. We scan the horizon. We check the forecast more often than we’d admit. We become, all of us, amateur meteorologists, squinting at cloud buildup over the mesas and pronouncing judgment: maybe today.
And then it comes. The first real storm of monsoon season doesn’t arrive politely. The sky bruises with dark blues and blacks in the space of an afternoon, the wind picks up that smell of creosote and wet dust and then the whole thing lets loose at once, rain hammering the roof like applause.
I am excited to stand on my porch during the first good storm this year and just watch. The neighbors are usually on their porches too. Somebody’s kids always running through the yard getting soaked on purpose. The street turned into a shallow river for 20 minutes, and then the sun comes back out as if nothing had happened and the whole world gets steam cleaned.
The desert never looks better than after a long rain when desolate desert sand turns to vibrant foliage and the brutal temperatures finally give us a break during the hottest month of the year.
