Every city I’ve lived in prior to Phoenix has been blessed/scourged year round with thunderstorms and flashfloods and deafening, booming, crashing, thunder noises and lightening that could near blind you if you looked at it directly. The storms usually caused the electricity to go out at times when you needed reading light or a hair dryer. The flooding typically kept you from running important errands like Fedex’ing packages, depositing checks or picking up milk due to low water crossings blocking your every maneuver. In school, you had tornado/thunderstorm drills where you’d have to use the ‘duck and cover’ technique and mash your head up against a wall in a hallway with no glass or windows. It all pretty much becomes routine when you live in cities like that.

Of course, it’s all taken to the extreme when you live in the Gulf or in coastal areas with the potential for massive destruction, as we’ve all witnessed this year, and that’s heartbreaking. But living in Arizona, with its near perfect weather for at least 9 months of the year, I appreciate a little weather and a little water.

The past few days here, with the intermittent light rain and slight wind, has nearly made me turn my car around on my morning commute to work so I can relish the gray light and ozone smell and curl up with a good book and a blanket at home. I’ll take what little I can get out here. Even if the rain dries up almost immediately and the only evidence is in the low lying flooded baseball fields and there’s no thunder that could rattle your pants off or lightening to turn night into daylight, I’ll take it.