On Thursday Tucson held the 13th annual El Día de San Juan Fiesta, an event meant to celebrate the coming of the monsoon.
But when, exactly, will it come?
• The forecast: There's a "slight" chance of dry thunderstorms in the mountains east of Tucson over the next few days, but the likelihood of measurable rain in the area is minuscule, the National Weather Service has said.
"This is still a little early for Tucson," meteorologist Bill Turner said of the monsoon. "You'll see some clouds, but as far as actual rain, that could be a while."
The summer thunderstorm season officially began June 15, but the Tucson area generally doesn't start seeing rain until July. And this year all signs point toward the early part of July being relatively weak in terms of monsoon activity, Turner said.
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The cloud buildup seen Thursday will go away this weekend as high pressure returns. More clouds could start popping up next week, Turner said.
• Ultra-low humidity: One of the main indicators of the moist air needed for thunderstorms to exist has been nearly nonexistent of late.
The relative humidity got as low as 2 percent on Tuesday afternoon, when the temperature at Tucson International Airport was 102 degrees and the dew point was 2.
"That's why it's so hard to get rain down on the ground," Turner said.
On StarNet: The Monsoon blog page has information from Monsoon Safety Awareness Week and other resources to get you through the season at azstarnet.com/monsoon
DID YOU KNOW
El Día de San Juan is an annual festival that celebrates the day St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of water, was asked to help bring the rains to Tucson so the crops would be plentiful.
Legend says that on June 24, 1540, Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado stood on the banks of the parched Santa Cruz riverbed and prayed for rain. It rained, and Coronado deemed that from that day forward the summer rains would come on the 24th day of June. According to tradition, this begins the monsoon rain season, though the National Weather Service now lists June 15 as the start of the monsoon.
SOURCE: City of Tucson website.
'Chubasco' came, went fast
In 1978 some local historians and scientists tried to get us to use the word "chubasco" in place of monsoon. Chubasco means squall or thunderstorm in Spanish.
No one paid the slightest heed, save for a Star editor who wrote an editorial welcoming the change.
This little semantic squall soon blew out of town, and "monsoon" it remains.
SOURCE: Star archives
Contact reporter Brian J. Pedersen at bjp@azstarnet.com or 573-4224.
