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Something slightly loftier, pointed and hopefuly witty. |
| A hardy try but I believe the monsoon season has reached its end. Each year from July to September Arizona experiences a summer storm season which brings heavy rains and spectacular lightening shows. For those that enjoy the powers of Mother Nature, Arizona puts you front row to some breath-taking sights. A monsoon is a seasonal prevailing wind which lasts for several months and has lasting climatic effects. The term includes almost all of the phenomena associated with the annual weather cycle within the tropical and subtropical land regions of the earth. It most commonly refers to the wet monsoon, or rainy season, in many parts of the world, but can also be used in reference to and the dry monsoon experienced periodically in the South East Asian continent. The term was first used in English with this meaning in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and neighboring countries to mean the seasonal winds blowing from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea in the southwest bringing heavy rainfall to the region. In hydrology, monsoonal rainfall is considered to be that which occurs in any region that receives the majority of its rain during a particular season, and so monsoons are referred to in relation to other regions such as in North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil and East Asia. The English name Monsoon, was derived from the Hindi word "mausam" meaning 'weather' in the time of the British Empire. In terms of total precipitation, total area covered and the total number of people affected, the monsoons affecting the Indian Subcontinent dwarf the North American monsoon (also called the "Mexican", "southwest", "desert", or "Arizona" monsoon(1). My first sister came along when I was four and gone was the silence that fell on our house at night. She would cry the moment her little head touched the mattress and scream until red-faced. My parents seemed oblivious to her tantrums and I was helpless to escape. We lived in Roseland, which is located within the Chicago city limits just south of the down town. Our house was on 115th and Wallace on a corner lot. To my four year old memories it was like living in a mansion. Its huge open rooms welcomed the morning sun and provided plenty of space to be a young boy. The Wallace house was a white split level, the main floor above street level, a huge basement and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the upper level. Yes, my first four years of life were quite wonderful until the invasion of this little screaming banshee. I’m not quite sure at what time I decided, for my own peace of mind, to move upstairs, but anything seemed better than my current situation. Dad understood my wish to move to another room but Mom was worried I wouldn’t be comfortable and would grow lonely. That may have been the beginnings of my solitary desires, as I do enjoy having time for myself. I remember the first few nights were spooky and it took some time to get used to the new noises I normally wouldn’t hear. Of course, my sister could still be heard at bed time, but it wasn’t as deafening. During the spring and summer months we would get horrible thunder storms that would rattle the entire house. I felt an odd comfort being in my little room alone with the rumble of thunder echoing off the neighboring houses. The flashes of lightening mesmerized my young interest and soon I discovered a new kind of “silence” had fallen over our Wallace house. Mother Nature came to my rescue and provided something that would drown my baby sister’s cacophonous cries and I once again found sleep. (1) Monsoon historical information gathered from Wikipedia.org |
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