The Monsoon

Or is it the mon-not-so-soon?
The weather people used to have a complicated process for deciding when the Arizona monsoon season officially started. It had something to do with dewpoint and elapsed time and could only be identified some number of days after the fact. It was like figuring out when Easter will be without access to a lunar calendar.
Now, they have a day in mind. It is June 15th.
For the uninitiated, the monsoon is our summer rainy season. It is when, if conditions are right, we get thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are area specific, and of variable size and intensity. From any particular vantage point you may see rain falling somewhere else, but not get a drop where you are. The normally dry streambed could become a raging muddy river of runoff from a thunderstorm "over there, somewhere."  Or, you could be subjected to a frog-drowning, zero-visibility downpour that starts with grape-sized hail and features gale-force winds that rip off your roof, or overturn semis. And it might last five minutes or an hour. It can happen three times a day, or not once in three weeks. When it does rain, it cools the air and smells terrific. When it doesn't rain, the humidity is like New Orleans (that means you sweat, but there is no evaporation, so you don't get cooled).
The right conditions involve a more-or-less stationary high-pressure system over Colorado and a more-or-less stationary low-pressure system over Mexico. The two systems together suck up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and funnel it into Arizona. When it runs into the mountains the rising hot air cools and forms clouds. This can cause rain. But it can also just cause a rapid downdraft of cooled air which can create haboobs. Haboobs are massive fast-moving dust storms that can be many miles wide. They reduce visibility, causing pileups on the highways, and can scour the paint right off a car.
Anyway, our monsoon is now 10 days in and we have had only one passing thundercloud that gave us a trace of rain. Imagine your mouth is dry, your throat is parched, you stopped sweating an hour ago (because you have no more moisture in your body) but you spot a water bottle. You eagerly tip the bottle to your mouth and two teaspoons of water drip out. That is the kind of rain we had on the 16th. Yesterday there was some attempt by the clouds to gather into serious accumulations. They murmured a little thunder, but passed by without relinquishing any of their precious water.
The mon-not-so-soon is underway.