On Rain

The rains have finally come to Tucson and as always their much needed water also brings mayhem and destruction. I ended up stranded at work for about 2 hours when the rain all of a sudden poured down in a mighty deluge obscuring all vision and rendering umbrellas and windshield wipers useless. I would have been SOL in a car so riding home on my bike was literally suicidal; aside from the high winds and raindrops that feel like little fists, the Tucson bike lanes double as storm drains. But it gets better, the woefully inadequate drainage system meant that the sidewalk was also submerged after a few moments. One of my coworkers regarded my reluctance to bike home in those conditions as foolish, claiming "a little water never hurt anyone". This was of course before some poor guy tried to bike across the street and was knocked down by a wave from a semi.
That aside, when you're not stranded because of the rain or suffering from power outages, the monsoon season is an amazing spectacle to behold. The awesome power of the rain itself is astounding, as is its quick and brutal nature. It unleashes its might upon the earth, uprooting trees and turning major streets into impassable rivers, then stops as quickly as it started. It may even rain heavily while the sun is still shining brightly, or the rain may pour relentlessly on one side of a house while the other side remains utterly dry.
I have been in over twenty countries and about ten states but I've never encountered rain that smells as good as here. Even the sound of rain isn't as good as it is here. Everywhere else is used to it, the grass and trees expect the rain and take it for granted. In the desert, the very ground rejoices in creaks and hisses as it slakes its thirst. Though it is blessed with overabundance it cannot consume all the water at once and the rest is washed away where it will all be soaked up by the desert floor many miles away. Other places are frequently visited by rain clouds which gently and delicately shower the landscape. Rarely is there lightning or thunder in these places. Thor was the mighty lightning god of the Vikings but he clearly never displayed his true strength in Sweden. His arsenal can, however, be realized in Tucson where giant arcs of lightning stretch across the sky and bombard the ground relentlessly while thunder rumbles around you constantly; each clap replaced by a new one before subsiding. In these moments, all the science of lightning and the dry safety of one's home is forgotten as the storms instill awe and humbling admiration of the forces of nature.