It is no commonly called a "non"soon. Used to be a mon-sooner-or-later. Before that, it was a scheduled monsoon.
During the first twenty-plus years in Tucson, my parents had a house in the foothills of the Catalinas looking down into the valley of Tucson and then clear to Mexico. Mom would plan and time dinner so that we could watch the black wall of water and incredible lightning storms during dessert on the front porch. Monsoon would arrive during the first week of July and continue for 6 or 8 weeks. A predictable daily occurrence.
In the spring of 1989 every heat record was shattered for three months every day. The monsoon began to get erratic, come earlier, later, last months longer, come from different directions and other forms of sporadic. Finally, the summer of 2020 brought no monsoon. In an entire year, we got not even a handful of sprinkling rains. This is scary. Things die off, wildlife suffers and numbers decline. Last year the monsoon rainfall all-time record was produced. History gave a few droughts and wet periods, volcanic activity sometimes, but here, everything suddenly lost any previous climate patterns in 1989.
I got a job meeting people at the airport from all over the world during a struggle period of single dad life, mid or late 1990's. Every person that I talked to, told me how the weather changed in 1989 where they lived. It has only gotten more erratic and extreme. It's like one of those circus performers who spins plates on sticks. The plates wobble more and more before they fall off. The jet streams, etc., starting from the arctic, have been looking like those plate patterns. The weather has followed suit. North there is crazy wet and cold and as that happens, we're getting the opposite. All of the reports here have been consistent. When I'm naked in the sun and you all are in blizzards or something.
There is drought, the dammed lakes have huge white bathtub rings, fires are sweeping everywhere. Many of my favorite places, from past trip reports are simply not there anymore. Huge venerable century's old trees that I have known, gone.
The government of the United States is a two party system, controlled on money interests. There is a fusion of corporate wealth controlled by a few and the government and those who operate it. The definition of Mussolini fascism.There are hundreds of millions being spent on think tanks, and influence to maintain and consolidate that immense power. The result is lip service and control by an oligarchy. We are lobsters in a pot as the heat slowly rises and helpless to make the change. Other issues get precedent often, some created. Crisis puts the greatest crisis in the shadows. Don't expect much from this government. Only local governments are stepping up, but they are often only distractions. Maybe, when an even bigger catastrophe strikes home to jar the populous to pitch forks for a couple of weeks, until it passes....
In the summer of 2020, sitting in the valley looking up at an entire mountain range burning up, while there is a non-soon for the first time in recorded history, gives a sense of helplessness.
We were going to do a story about a trip to Lake Powell, but the whole damn thing is closed, going empty. People are down there checking out the archeology that was buried by the dam. The ruins are now back!
We won't be washing from a bucket very soon, but we don't have grass here, except golf courses. Water ain't cheap around here. The last free flowing rivers will dry up completely like the rest. Fire will be out of control, as our hiking/camping forests disappear. We can always bathe in the sauna, burning old palates and crates.
Right now, it's 105F out there. The heat index is 103F! Some days, we have been experiencing things like 3% humidity! Some monsoon! It is 18% humidity this afternoon. We got some rain last week, a storm blew in and then out in a bout a half an hour. The mountains got more than that, so the fire danger is slightly less.
I have to go find something to laugh about, now. Yea, it sucks and will get worse. There is a teasing chance of rain in a few days, but the heat is too much to pull it up here.
Jbee
