Desert Thunderstorms

This is what I think of when I think of rain: thunderstorms in Tucson. (Thanks Kent Wood, photographer with a porn star name.)

It is weird living a place where it rains all the time and there is so little thunder and lightning. While I suppose there is some inherent beauty in all rain, storms without thunder and lightning is like a dress without sequins: it can be beautiful, but it will probably fall short of being bad ass.

The other thing this photo can’t capture is the incredible rush of water which comes with many desert storms. You can be surviving your way through another 110 degree day, sun blazing in August: everything you touch outside of your living space is hot. Car seat (cloth or pleather) ass-scorchingly hot. Burn your fingers as you put your seatbelt on. Realize the Starbucks cup you left in the car from the day before has half-melted into your console. Run your not-that-old car for a good 10 minutes before the air conditioning really starts to do its job. Sweat is starting to bead on the edge of where your hairline meets your forehead and you’re already thinking about how the shower you just took before leaving the house may have been a colossal waste of time. I remember squinting across the saguaro in amazement, knowing a whole ecosystem has existed under these conditions for much longer than I can even comprehend.

So this is the day you’re having and you notice as you’re driving clouds rolling in from the west, surprisingly dark and huge. You’re walking out of the grocery store an hour later and you hear a crack–I remember being able to feel the vibration in my chest sometimes.  Thunder so loud and lightning so close it is actually cause for concern. Depending on the storm and which part of town you live in, you may or may not be getting home any time soon as water comes down in endless, furious sheets. (There’s video and a summary here. Science takes the fun out of some things for me personally, but maybe not for others.) Not your average storm.

I don’t have the wherewithal to bore most folks I meet with this love poem to desert thunderstorms. In the opposite of effusiveness, I have occasionally said at work, “Man, you wouldn’t believe the rain in the desert. It is like nothing else.” People smile and nod, I am sure to humor me. I can hear them thinking, “Rain is rain. How different can it be?”

But it is so different: it demands your attention. It announces how amazing it is that the same car hood you could have cooked an egg on 2 hours ago is now being pelted with gallons of water and is one of the only things separating you from a sea of lightning bolts. It is weather with the volume turned up: exhilaration with a dash of destruction.