So, we spent the summer in Tucson. We never thought that we would do that, but the combination of a global pandemic and a friend here who was dying of ALS made us choose to sit tight this summer. When we arrived in Tucson last fall, I remarked to Jane that it would be interesting to be here sometime to witness the "monsoon" season. Didn't expect to do so right away, but here we are. Tucson gets only around 12 inches of rain in an "average" year, with half of it falling in the months of July, August, and September. The rainstorms that produce those totals can be quite spectacular, we've heard. Giant thunderclouds fueled by gulf moisture and triple-digit desert heat result in massive downpours, dry riverbeds suddenly spring to life and fill with water, and many roads you shouldn't drive on, lest you be swept away.  

Here's a picture of one of our summer storms. You can see that this one is primarily over the Santa Rita mountains, but some rain did fall on us.

Well, the monsoon rains did not really materialize this year. We had a couple of decent thunderstorms, but they were very localized and didn't really drop much rain. We had one that produced enough rain to make water run down the street and through some nearby arroyos, but the Santa Cruz river has stayed dry all summer. This is the second summer in a row now where they are calling it the "non-soon," as the rains did not come. At this time in an average summer, there would have been 4.6 inches of rain. We've had 1.6 inches.

But we have had heat. Locals told us that June is the hottest month, and when July and August come along, you get these great cooling rainstorms. Well, not so much this year. The month of July set a record for the hottest month in Tucson in 125 years of weather records. That record lasted exactly 31 days, until August 2020 surpassed July and became the hottest month on record. And with it, summer 2020 became the hottest summer on record for Tucson.

We have seen some interesting wildlife here. During our first week, a gila monster walked by the back patio gate. Later that week we saw a horned lizard in the front of the house. Hummingbirds and bats are frequent visitors to the feeder on the patio, and we've seen javelina, coyotes, and bobcat in the neighborhood. Of course, lizards are pretty common here; we even have one that lives in the garage. But this is the guy we didn't expect to see.