Rainitude!

[Writers Plot]

posted by Doranna

I have rainitude.

Once upon a time, I lived way too many years in the lake effect country of western New York (a place where one of our esteemed bloggers still lives, and where we all have ties of one sort or another). The weather there can be described, in a one-word nutshell: Gloom. An average of 200 cloudy days a year, thank you very much, thanks to the various Great Lakes looming around (Ontario, Erie). In Rochester, if I was to think about rain, it would be to rue it--especially as this particular body is sensitive to such things as damp and humidity. (Yeah, we won't even talk about the humidity. Here, you wanna borrow my squeegee?)

This upon a time, I live in northern Arizona. Ooh, I love it here! We're within spitting distance of the three sunniest cites in the country--Yuma, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, Nevada--although up here at 7,000 feet the weather is quite a bit more variable. We have five seasons: Fall (briskly windy), winter (snow, which provides us with our year-round water), early spring (astonishingly windy, hang on to your eyebrows), late spring (hothothot drydrydry firesfiresfires), summer (monsoon ie tremendous thunderstorms, flash floods, and drama in the sky). None of our seasons are boring. Whatever the weather does up here, it does it with vigor. The clear skies are the high altitude bluest of blue, the clouds are low and tumbling and full of strange architecture. The rain seldom deigns to pitter patter around--oh, no, it storms through with gusto.

When we get it, that is.

Since 1999, this area has been not only in deep drought, it has been under the onslaught of abnormally high temperatures. The combination has us all edging toward desperation when the subject of water comes up. Water usage restrictions are the norm, and we're all accustomed to that. But what we never get accustomed to--what I never get accustomed to, as a recent immigrant (seven years, now)--are the fires.

Shortly after I moved here, Arizona had the Rodeo-Chediski fire, a monstrous fire that ate almost 500,000 acres. That was several hours to the south of my home, and yet the smoke still painted the sky. Baptism by fire, indeed. Last year, a fire ten miles from here had the community in an uproar; thanks partly to the horrors of Rodeo-Chediski (and the resulting community preparations), that fire was quickly managed. This year, fire planes circling low directly overhead alerted a friend and I; we watched as a chopper with a bambi bucket dumped water on a nearby plume of smoke and went back to a nearby community faux-pond for refills.

Later we learned that this one had been just over a mile away. Waaaay too close.

So it may be of no little wonder that I have completely changed my tune when it comes to rain. All through the late spring season, I hope for an early monsoon, right along with everyone else. As day after day of dryhot bakes the earth, I hunt the western horizon for any sign of building cumulus clouds--they start white and puffy, but they can turn dark in a moment. Sometimes they forget to be clouds, and skim right along the ground, putting us literally in the middle of a thunderstorm. (Like I said...vigor!) And when the teaser clouds finally build into humidity, and the horse's tail stops standing out on end, and when I stop cracking huge arcing sparks just by reaching for a light switch, we finally have a chance of rain--real drenching, gullywashing, thunderblasting rain.

Like many of us here, I now rejoice in it...like many of is, I might even be just a little bit obsessed by it! But you'll have to excuse me now. A rain cell just came through, and I need to go out and dance in it.