The Sky's Promise

From this morning to early afternoon, the sky turned from white to charcoal grey, the air thickened with moisture. Winds kicked up in short gusts, only to subside momentarily, like the capricious calm on the New England coast right before the North Atlantic unleashes one of her notorious nor’easters.

It rarely rains here in the Sonoran Desert, which encompasses most of southern Arizona, the southeastern corner of California, and the western half of the Mexican state of Sonora stretching south to the tip of the Baja peninsula.

Occasionally, a dramatic cloud sprinkles a few drops then scoots away leaving blue sky and unsatisfied soil.

But when a monsoon thunderstorm rolls across the hot desert floor, giant raindrops bullet down in sheets of water from black skies exploding with spidery lightning balls and thunderclaps so loud they sound like a hundred jet fighters blasting through the sound barrier at once.

The day’s foreboding weather makes me certain we will see such a storm. Then, for hours after the sky began to threaten, nothing. Even the wind gusts settled, a gentle breeze carrying the distinct aroma of the desert before a rainfall the only remaining hint of possibility.

Finally, it’s dark, the afternoon’s damp breeze replaced by a dry hot wind, an impending downpour the ghost of a lover’s promise.

Arizona summer weather writers daily life writing diary