Good luck to you.

Monsoons are coming get ready.

How do the storms seem to be in Maricopa?  I used to live in Surprise and we rarely got hit with anything.  We didn't even get much rain out of Monsoon season.

Monsoons are great entertainment during the hot dull summer months.  First comes the wall of dust and powerful wind, then the rain (IF you get rain where you are at).  The most pronounced thing is the smell of rain in the desert.  You can smell the rain before it gets here - it smells great.

If a storm is coming, make sure patio chairs, umbrellas, anything that can be blown over will, so get them to a secure place.  If you're out driving be very careful driving in the dust storm, do NOT drive into any flooded roadways no matter how shallow it looks.  But THE most unfortunate thing to happen during a storm is the loss of electricity hence no air conditioning.  Usually it will come back on in a few minutes, hopefully, no longer than a couple hours.  If it is going to be hours, you might consider checking into a motel.

Yes, I hate the new rule that monsoons start on June 15th!  Give me a break, we never have enough humidity in June to have the monsoon start.  It takes all the fun out of anticipating when it arrives.

There are some good Arizona driving safety tips on this site:

http://www.azdot.gov/CCPartnerships/Haboob/index.asp

Key to remember  and it sounds wrong... pull off the road as far as you can and turn OFF your lights, keep your foot off the brakes.  NO FLASHERS.  The reason... in a severe storm people tend to follow the brake lights of the car in front of them.  You don't want anyone to run into you because they think they are following you and in reality you are parked!

As someone else wrote above - batten down the flying objects and you'll be fine.  Keep flashlights, a battery powered lantern and battery powered radio handy for emergencies.  A couple of gallons of bottled water are also helpful if the electricity is out for a while (some areas lose water pressure).  Candles are ok if there are no small children or pets - too dangerous otherwise.

Avoid washes that are subject to flash flooding.  It may not be raining in Maricopa - but it's pouring in Tucson and that's where the water that runs in the washes here originates.   NEVER cross flooded roads.  That water is running a lot faster than it looks - not to mention it may have eroded the road surface.

Enjoy the show!  It's very exhilarating

And welcome to Maricopa.

My road from last year.  (White river driving)

Posted By Jgk2383 on 06/17/2008 9:29 PM
Thanks for the replies were from the east coast, so this is quite different for us. We live in the Meadows, so I guess we will see what its like when it happens!

It 's kinda like a very..very short lived Nor-Easter instead of snow it's sand....being from the east coast myself as well... I find them exciting but also remain respectful of them...

The thunderheads will build up high every afternoon, sometimes they turn into actual storms, a lot of the time they just fizzle out.  The only way you can forcast them with certainty is once the wall of dust (could be a couple of miles high) starts moving in. That may give you a half hour forecast.  As mentioned above, sometimes you get rain with it, sometimes just the dust.  Also, you get storms that are all "heat"  lightning and thunder.  Again, no rain, but it's a great show! 

Don't worry about your husband getting stranded, the storms and their runoff do not usually last that long, maybe a two hour wait.

I agree they usually don't last very long but we moved to Arizona in 1997 and that first monsoon had a storm I never expected.  I was living in Ahwatukee at the time and it started with black clouds over the mountains immediately to the west.  The oddest thing about this was that this was at about 6:30 a.m.  I had taken the day off of work to get one of my cars fixed, had breakfast with the family around 48th & Ray when it hit.  The torrential rain and frequent lightning was so bad that even though I was parked close to the door, we were scared to step out the door.  We got to the vehicle and I dropped my family off to shop and I hit a gas station on I-10 & Chandler and I have never been so scared standing outside even though I was filling under the overhang lightning struck a building next door and across the street all within about 2 minutes of each other.  The thunder was so loud that I couldn't hear for the next couple of days.  That storm did not stop with the lightning and thunder with heavy rain until almost noon.  Needless to say, that one storm was the complete opposite of what most Arizonans call a monsoon storm but with as many storms as I've been through in the midwest and tornado alley, I don't think I've ever had a storm scare the crap out me like that.  Oddly enough I'm a weather buff but that was one scary core to be in.  Strangely I have yet to see a similar storm since that one day.  So........here's to an entertaining monsoon (at least in the absence of a movie theater for the time being) 

Honestly, these monsoons are nothing compared to the storms elsewhere. It's just that they are extreme for this particular consistent climate. I wish the monsoons were longer, but they rarely seem to last for more than two hours.

It's no big deal. Just have a list of ways in and out of town handy in case of flooding. Oh, and don't count on Honeycutt if you live in Tortosa. 

...that is until the bridge is built