Hot Town, Summer in a Desert City

Summer in Central Arizona is brutal. Temperatures run over 100-plus degrees for about five months, usually beginning in mid-May and continuing until mid-October. Some days, like today, top 105 degrees with the promise of even hotter days to come. Walking outside has the feel of a blast furnace opened in your face. You can actually feel your skin burn as the sun hits it, made worse by no humidity in the air. Rare is the day with clouds in the sky, and rarer still are clouds that are more than thin haze. Vegetation has a parched, scorched look that makes you long for the verdancy of other climes. As each year passes, I have less tolerance for the inexorable heat. Even as a native of the state, I find the summers wretched and draining. It seems that youth is an insulator and a deflector of heat, and as one grows older, the insulation grows thin. My insulation has worn very thin.

The “dry heat” period will end soon. Monsoon season begins around July 1, and announces itself by a rise in humidity levels. It’s like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, save for the possibility of a thunderstorm. We are in our ninth year of drought here, so the storms are rare. Because they are so rare, thunderstorms, in all their glory, are the only thing to look forward to in the heat of July, August and September. There is nothing quite as beautiful as the huge, dark thunderheads forming on the horizon in the late afternoon, building their mushroom tops as they move closer and closer, holding the promise of rain. Most of the time we get only sheets of heat lightning or a dust storm, but when the rains come, it is glorious! The air cools by double digits and the pungent smell of creosote bush drifts in from the deserts. The next day is especially miserable because of the increased humidity brought on by the rains, but if the thunderstorm was a spectacular one, complete with crashing thunder, giant lightning bolts and torrents of rain, it is almost worth suffering through the next day.

It seems that those who move here feel compelled to say the heat doesn’t bother them; that they love being outdoors in the scorching sun, and have gladly traded the snow they left for the desert heat. I can understand that trade-off. The remarkable thing is that I’ve met few transplants who seem to appreciate the thunderstorms or the smell of the desert after a rain in the same way that a native does. Perhaps thunderstorms and rain were plentiful back in the home state and don’t hold the same fascination as for those who hail from here. But not appreciate the clean, slightly tarry smell of the creosotes and wet desert earth after a rainstorm? Now that is hard to fathom!