Monsoon Season-YIKES!!

Its one of those RARE mornings here in the Valley of the Sun. No Sunshine, just house-rattling Thunder, clouds and now its raining so hard I literally can't see the building next door.
Yep...it's MONSOON TIME!

No one ever told me about monsoons BEFORE I moved to AZ. If they had-I might have thought twice about living here becuz I HATE storms, thunder & lightening (unless I am very far away from it).
Growing up in the North Bay, we might get one or two thunderstorms a year but nuthin like this. This is CRAZY!! Last year (my 1st Monsoon Season) I freaked out--I was SO unprepared! Every single day around 5pm or so (always seemed to happen around rush hour) an alert (yall know the Emergency Broadcast System alerts?) would come across the TV and advise everyone to stay inside because of the Monsoons & alert us to where the flash floods were. Flash floods in the desert..sumthin I never thought Id hafta worry about! Hell..just the sound of that stupid Alert System going off and it NOT being a "test" makes my heart beat faster & gets me nervous.

This year has been unbelievably tame, at least here in my area. Last year our complex lost over 25 Huge trees in less than 3 months from the winds, & storms. It seemed like everytime I took Rocky out for a walk-there was another tree that had been ripped from the soil. One storm last year even ripped the carport cover (Metal pole and all) RIGHT OUT OF THE CEMENT! (And crushed 4 of my neighbors cars in the process) Scary stuff!