Stormy Weather

I was not prepared for what this spring has brought in terms of weather. Last year we were spoiled by essentially having no winter. This year is the winter that will not leave. Compounding the unseasonably cold temperatures and blustery winds is the fact that we are still getting precious little precipitation here in Colorado Springs. While the drought continues, it is the impact on my psyche that has been hardest to deal with.

You would think that I, having spent the first twenty-seven years of my life in Portland, Oregon, where seeing the sun is a near miraculous event, that I would be hardened to overcast, dreary days. Apparently not. Indeed, I have most recently spent a decade in climates of “extreme sun” counting Tucson, Arizona and here on the Front Range in Colorado. I think I have been trying to make up for those 27 years of drizzle.

It occurred to me while riding the bus on a particularly ugly day in Cincinnati what I find intolerable about “gray” days: The sky has no contour. You look up and it is like you are under a great silver dome. It feels like you are still indoors. This, to me, is the overriding feature that must be at the root of SAD (“Seasonal Affective Disorder”).

At least here in Colorado you can’t usually say the clouds themselves are depressing. Eerie, yes, and sometimes menacing, but not depressing. This is the only place I’ve been where the clouds remind me of being in a coffee mug and God is stirring cream into it. Short of a tornado, this is the closest one can come to the feeling that the sky really is falling.

Lately, however, the days have been far too reminiscent of Oregon. The worst is when the mountains disappear. The foothills and Pikes Peak are near constants in the landscape here, and when you cannot see them it becomes both disorienting and claustrophobic. The world literally seems to be closing in around you.

Lastly, the duration of cold, and periodic light snow, has taken its toll on me mentally. I guess you would call it “cabin fever,” but whatever the name it robs your mood of the highs that normally come at this time of year with blooming flowers, singing birds, the hum of bees. I find myself disturbingly unmotivated, disinterested, and even angry when I have no reason to be.

Weather cannot alone be blamed for our own personal miseries (excepting tornados, hurricanes, and floods I suppose), but no longer will I readily dismiss anyone who says that rainy days and gray skies get them down. We all have a hard time with things we cannot control. Rising above the austerity of climate at this time of year is challenging to be sure.

Monsoon

Yesterday we had what was probably the last big storm of the “monsoon” season here in southern Arizona. I haven’t quite gotten used to the idea that we have monsoons. This isn’t Bangladesh. I have to take the television meteorologist’s word that the summer weather pattern qualifies as such.

During May and June, the Sonoran Desert heats up to an almost intolerable degree. Literally! Temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. One year in recent memory we had a string of 39 straight days that were over 100 F. This simmering pattern sets the stage for what is to come. The winds change toward the end of June as low pressure replaces the fading high pressure, and moisture is drawn up from the Sea of Cortez. Rains usually follow.

Still, the definition of our Arizona monsoon seems to depend upon who you ask. Some say that when the dew point reaches 54 degrees Fahrenheit, it more or less marks the onset of the summer rainy season. The dew point is the temperature at which air becomes saturated with water vapor and that vapor begins to condense. Others simply assert that the average beginning of the monsoon falls on about July 7.

That is not to say that every monsoon is “average.” Far from it. Last year there was almost no rain at all, and this year has not been a great improvement. My immediate neighborhood has seen maybe three good storms with heavy rains. An average year would be more than double that.

The thunderstorms associated with the monsoons can be terribly violent. The storm yesterday included hail as well as rain, plus very gusty winds. A storm a few weeks ago spawned lightning that lit a tree on fire in a nearby park. Some streets here in Tucson are sacrificed to drainage during storms, and I jokingly tell people that I live on the North Fork of Magnolia during the monsoons.

Most destructive of the monsoon phenomena are “microbursts.” These are straight-line winds that can wreak just as much havoc as a weak tornado. Microbursts are essentially “wind bombs” that happen when cold air in the top of a thunderhead suddenly drops to the ground, sending the equivalent of a shock wave of wind in all directions. The winds generated can exceed 70 miles per hour, and the phenomenon can last from five to fifteen minutes. The area impacted is small, however, generally restricted to less than 2.5 miles in any given direction.

The intensity of the monsoon season varies considerably, and La Niña and El Niño events can exert quite an influence, but the rains are vital to preserving the diversity of flora and fauna in the Sonoran Desert.

Snow-i-zona

The recent storms that migrated here to Arizona from southern California have produced heavy rains in the valleys, and heavy snow in the higher elevations. Even the Santa Catalina Mountains, of only moderate altitude, got their share. I took these images from my apartment complex in midtown Tucson, looking north.

I find it rather amusing that there are palm trees in the foreground, and scenery more reminiscent of Colorado in the background. One of those two seems to be misplaced, maybe Photoshopped into the frame. Nope, it is all real.

My friends in Massachusetts would kid me about the snow when it fell during my stay up there, seems as how unaccustomed to precipitation I was. I'm actually no stranger to the white stuff, and quite enjoy it, especially away from an urban setting.

I remember when my Explorer Post, which kept me out of trouble during high school, had a weekend up near the timberline on Mt. Hood in Oregon. We stayed in a two-story cabin you had to reach on snowshoes at that time of year (April). We entered on the second floor. It was delightful: warm during the day with bright sun, the snow crystals gleaming like diamonds. Camp robbers (birds called gray jays) stole our pancakes, literally right out from under our noses, but we laughed.

Rain Delay

”Oh, you’ll be there at a beautiful time of the year!” That is what people kept telling me when I told them I was moving temporarily to western Massachusetts at the end of May. Well, here it is at the beginning of July. Yesterday, in fact. Does this look beautiful to you?

I shouldn’t be complaining since I’m gainfully employed, doing meaningful work no less, with great people around me on a really nice campus full of resources at my disposal. I really didn’t expect day after day of overcast skies, though, with rain nearly every day as well since I’ve been here.

”This is highly unusual weather we’re having” people here keep telling me. Sure. Whatever. Just wake me up when it gets over eighty degrees please. It has been there already, to be truthful, I just can’t remember when that was.

The dim light on cloudy days has made taking clear images of insects nearly impossible, and that is when the breeze isn’t blowing. This is where I would benefit by knowing how to configure camera settings on my own, but I honestly don’t know when I’d have time to learn. It is all I can do to keep up my blogs.

Tonight at the local restaurant (Wolfie’s in South Deerfield, highly recommended) I overheard a family at another table talking about the weather. “If this was snow we’d had over the last month-and-a-half, I hear it would be eighty inches” the woman said. Well, I guess I should be grateful for small favors, though this morning I actually dreamed it snowed, though briefly….