ChronoTech

via The New York Times

The monsoon season in Albuquerque is here. That means, that while the rest of the country is busy boiling in it’s own skin, I’m currently drinking coffee outside of Satellite in nearly perfect comfort. It’s maybe 75 degrees out right now.

Unfortunately this brings with it the totally unpredictable rain that is one of the signature elements of life in ‘Burque. I’m perfectly comfortable right now, but it might be pouring rain in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes after that, it’ll have probably stopped.

Back in the day, these rainstorms use to mean that the entire valley would flood on a fairly regular basis. All of the main streets on the slope from the foothills to the Rio Grande would become minor rivers a couple of times a week. This was a bit annoying

These days, we have a fairly extensive network of concrete drainage ditches, locally referred to as arroyos. If you were to visit ‘Burque in the late spring, when it rarely rains, you would wonder why the hell we have them. If you were to visit during a rainstorm in the monsoon season, your confusion would be quickly abated as a wall of water slammed down an arroyo, typically with a greater water volume than the river usually has.

Some of the streets still flood, particularly Lomas Blvd. Every couple of years the local news gets to report on how someone in a Chevy Metro got swept down the street and drowned. The really frightening thing about the monsoon storms is that they can deliver the same amount of water in 20 minutes as a three day thunderstorm might in Seattle. If it ever rained for three days straight in Albuquerque, there might not be a city here anymore.

In the meantime, I’ll take my 75 to 80 degree July days and laugh while people boil in their own skins in Phoenix.

Fuck you, United States Senate.

That is all.