PHOENIX — Where is our monsoon? Summer 2023 in the Valley of the Sun is one of the worst weatherwise on record. And it’s not just the heat but the lack of rain.
“In fact, if we look at April, May, June, July, this is the first time ever that Phoenix at that measure station hasn’t had any measurable rain,” said Erinanne Saffell, Arizona State Climatologist.
133 days of no measurable rain to be exact. So, what’s with this year’s 'non-soon' monsoon?
“We need it to get hot in June to get that ridge of high pressure to bring in those thunderstorms and that started happening in July and it got really hot and so now what we are dealing with is a late delayed monsoon season,” said Saffell.
Historically how does this year compare to previous hot and dry years?
“I went back and looked at 1974 when we had that heat wave that we just broke the records for and what happened in monsoon season in '74 was it was pretty wet,” said Saffell.
In 1990 when Phoenix had the hottest day ever on record, the monsoon season was still pretty good.
No one will ever forget the summer of 2014 when, thanks to hurricane Norbert, the Valley got drenched. Cars were even underwater on I-10 west of downtown Phoenix.
With El Nino still developing…we can’t rule anything out yet.
“I don’t want to call it the non-soon yet we’ll wait until the end of September because we don’t want to offend it if it is coming,” said Saffell.
