Monsoons

Traditional lore, pre climate change, is that the rains start by the Fourth of July, and this year, that seems to be true. The white clouds gather in the early afternoon, packets of warm air that rise from the heated ground, cool, and condense. The cloud’s flat base is the level where condensation begins while the rest of the air continues upward in stacks of puffy white. Now in the monsoon season, in less stable conditions, these packets of warm air move up through temperatures that are dropping rapidly, warm air meeting cold air, and the cloud developing higher and more vertically, with peaks and towering cliff walls. Inside the cloud, there is further rising and falling, condensation, coalescence, until water droplets become heavy enough to fall. In cloud language, the word nimbus means rain and a cumulus cloud has just become a cumulus-nimbus, perhaps seven miles in height and several miles wide. High altitude winds shear its top, the anvil from which trails of ice crystals or cirrus clouds spin out in thin fibrous wisps, also called mare’s tails. Electrical energy builds up as water and ice particles are repeatedly split and separated. Suddenly there is a flash, brightness, cracks, and rumbles--a late afternoon thunderstorm. The humans rush to turn off their computers. The dark gray clouds release their swollen bellies, water falls from the sky, and the humans dance. Or maybe they just go about their business, in and out of stores, cleaning house, sitting at their desk, watching children, fixing a car, but suddenly happier. Relieved. The rains have come.