Tucson Monsoon Season Starts Today June 15, 2009
June 15, 2009
Post Tags: national weather service , Tucson-Monsoon-Season
When is Tucson 2009 Monsoons Season?
Monsoon Season Starts Today June 15th
This question pops up a lot. The answer got a lot easier to answer last years. A season is a season, is a season. We know the exact date each year when Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter begins. Almost every culture or country has seasons and dates when those begin and end. But for some time Tucson’s monsoon season was different.
It was determined by a calculation that went something like this:
The average dewpoint is 54 degrees or greater for three consecutive days.
Dewpoint where? At the airport? In the Foothills? Downtown city hall? Granted temps are usually associated with the airport. Why? Because in the early days they had the equipment that was most accurate. True today? Not necessarily.
However, in 2008 the National Weather Service decided to end the endless debate over Tucson Monsoon SEASON and decided it should be like any other season. It starts on June 15th and ends September 30th. Dewpoint or no Dewpoint.
The average rainfall during Monsoon season is 6.06 inches of rain. This is about half our annual rainfall in Tucson. But again, how is that determined? From the rain fall totals taken at the Tucson International Airport. Are there parts of Tucson that get more than 12 inches of rain a year. YOU BET THERE ARE.
Get up closer to the mountains, any of the mountains and during monsoon you will see a lot more rain than what falls at the airport. Maybe one of these days we will crawl out of the 19th century and into the 21st century on some of these things and instead of using the equivilent of a horse and buggy approach we will put to good use some of the cheap modern technologies available and have accurate up to date rainfall information.
By the way here is a little tidbit for you. More rain falls on Tucson during Monsoon season than all the water used annually.
Here is another, the drought conditions on the east coast last summer were far worse than in Tucson. We live in a desert and while we still have a lot of wetlander attitudes about water here, for example: run it all off as quickly as possible instead of harvest it for future use, we do a much better job of water management than most of the country.
When is Tucson going to run out of water? Good question. When Florida is dry and Georgia is brown, Tucson will be closer to running out of water, but the places that have enjoyed abundance of water in the past century will be in much wosre shape water wise than Tucson way before we are.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Has the monsoon season actually started yet given the traditional rules of three days with a dewpoint…
thank you in advance.
km
June 29th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
KM,
Not yet in the traditional sense, it should be sometime this week. Raining out right now.
Dave
June 30th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Monsoon season hasn’t started officially yet, has it? We’ve only been getting some rain like once a week, but not enough to call it the beginning of the monsoon season.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
JH,
Actually, it is officially here by both criteria. Yesterday we had our third day with the dew point above 54 degrees. It was noted in the Arizona Daily Start today. Monsoon is Here.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Ok, so as of yesterday, but not as of the 15th. Just clarifying.
Thank you,
JH
July 1st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
JH,
As stated in the post, Monsoon “Season” now starts like any other season. That date is June 15th – Sept. 15th. Like summer begins on June 21st. Not the third day in a row the temp reaches 100.
By the old method of three consecutive days with a dew point above 53 degrees, that was achieved on Monday June 29th. But not in all of Tucson. In the Northwest that hasn’t happened yet, which is why the new approach of viewing it like any other season was adopted in 2008.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Hey Dave how was the season down there? I hope you guys enjoyed more rain than we did in Phoenix. It’s my favorite time of the year, and this year it was horrible. I think it briefly rained 4 or 5 days
September 17th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Jayson,
Monsoon sucked this year. We have had more rain in the last 10 days than all summer. True Monsoon “official” only ended Monday. Hoping for some more moisture yet in Sept.