Monsoon season in southern Arizona starts mid-June and lasts until the end of September.

This is when the humidity can raise drastically and one gets to feel how it must be to live in Florida. During this time the “Valley” does not only get some rain but also dust storms and massive thunderstorms. These dust storms are really fascinating – it seems they are coming out of nowhere and they can move at 40mph – the last one was about 2,400ft (800m) heigh and 35mi (56km) wide.

On some days our weather apps fire off alerts one after the other and the National Weather Service is broadcasting warnings on TV every 15 minutes or so.

So far this year our area didn’t get much rain, but we got three massive dust storms within 10 days and last night the first massive thunderstorm hit us. The wind gusts ripped off a lot of branches from trees and displaced patio furniture and everything that was not “bolted down”. We were positively surprised though that the power didn’t go out.

Since it was late when the storm calmed down we did not venture out to check the damage in the neighborhood until the morning. The road close by was flooded for the first time this year, there were branches and debris everywhere and hundreds if not thousands of dead fish laying in the grass on on the street (we stopped at a puddle and rescued a couple dozen fish).

Update on August 11th: Another massive thunderstorm his last night and even more flooding, so we added more pictures.