вЂњItвЂ™s kind of like an emotional thing in that I go up and down with the dewpoint temperature,вЂќ he told me. He says his moods are dictated by the season during last summerвЂ™s вЂњnonsoon,вЂќ he cycled through all five stages of grief. вЂњ(We wanted) to find new ways of talking about the monsoon that engaged the public, because we know how itвЂ™s the single season that captivates the attention of people,вЂќ said Guido.ДЇor Crimmins, it was also an excuse to indulge his obsession with the monsoon rains. It was that dialogue that inspired them, along with fellow researcher and producer Ben McMahan, to create the monsoon game. And in recent years, thereвЂ™s inevitably an episode where the usual hosts, Michael Crimmins and Zack Guido, researchers and professors at the University of Arizona, have a back-and-forth about their monsoon predictions. OVER THE PAST DECADE, the University of ArizonaвЂ™s Climate Assessment for the Southwest program (CLIMAS) has hosted an entertaining podcast about local weather systems. Flash-flood notices lit up our phones all summer long in what an announcer at a local indie-movie theater called вЂњa symphony of storm alerts.вЂќ

But the rain brought problems of its own: While this yearвЂ™s outsized monsoon storms were welcome, they were often accompanied by dangerous flooding that overwhelmed the desert arroyos and washes. Mesquite trees begin taking over my patio, and the mosquitos, which multiplied with the rain, eagerly dined out on my arms. What was brown and dry was now lush and green, and weeds flourished in the sidewalk cracks in the middle of August. It was worth it, though: The Tucson Mountains suddenly looked like a scene from Jurassic Park, with rocky slopes giving way to verdant valleys. I was off, badly off, with my conservative estimate. What was brown and dry was now lush and green, and weeds flourished in the sidewalk cracks in the middle of August.Д«ut August surpassed expectations again, with nearly 4 inches of rain. I didnвЂ™t believe our monsoon luck would continue past July.

I fiddled with my calculations for August and eventually settled on 1.8 inches, the median guess for Tucson. Should I move the line closer to the right, showing how much I hoped for more rain? Or settle for a more conservative estimate? I imagined other weather enthusiasts across the West doing the same, attempting to make sense of a seasonal weather pattern that doesnвЂ™t seem to make sense much. I moved a thick yellow line across the graph, contemplating my best estimates for El Paso, Flagstaff, Tucson, Phoenix and Albuquerque. Each city has its own page, with a bar graph depicting the median and mean rain totals, giving a sense of the usual rainfall. I created a username, joining the ranks of other amateur forecasters with imaginative monikers like вЂњmesquite nerdвЂќ and вЂњweather geek.вЂќ It was easy to log my guess for the month of August. Intrigued by how erratic the seasons seemed to be - and delighted by the prospect of winning a $400 backyard weather station that could track everything from wind speed to solar radiation - I decided to give the fantasy forecast a try. It rained 8 inches in Tucson - the largest amount since the city started keeping track in the 1890s - a tremendous amount compared to the previous yearвЂ™s 1.62 inches, and even to the yearly average, which is around 6 inches. That month turned out to be the wettest on record. It was around that time that I first read about the Southwest Monsoon Fantasy Forecasts, an online game where people cast their monsoon predictions. I ran out, letting the rain soak through my clothes as a rush of water stormed down the street, my feet and ankles submerged in a dirty deluge.Д«y July, the rain was making regular appearances. What if it was the last monsoon ever? Given our increasingly unpredictable world, I decided to embrace the moment. As he pranced under dim streetlights, I worried that this storm would be like last yearвЂ™s - the only rain of the season. When the first rains hit, my partner, a Tucson resident for more than a decade, ran out into the street in our neighborhood to frolic in the torrent. Then, in mid-June this year, the monsoon season finally began.

Instead, I sweltered in my swamp-cooled duplex. I waited for the promised monsoon to cool things down, but that relief never came. But the summer that followed turned out to be the hottest on record. When I moved to Tucson from western Colorado in the fall of 2019, I knew the weather would be warmer than I was used to.

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