Each summer by early July, the monsoon season arrives just in time to break a long stretch of temps in the high 90s and higher. In the monsoon, clouds build in the mountains, moving out to rain in the late afternoon. (And, if we’re truly lucky, it might rain most of the night.) Showers are widespread but one neighborhood may get an inch and another not a drop.
We have all of this right now, but don’t call it the monsoon. Monsonal moisture moves from the south to the north. This nonsoon flows from the north to the south each day. It’s just a topsy-turvy coincidence, but Albuquerque is loving it just the same. Monsoon or nonsoon, we’ll take it.
Actually “nonsoon” is a term for dry weather in place of normal monsoon conditions, and this is what we are going to get this summer after this “tease” we are getting this week. Its going to be a hot dry New Mexico summer for 2013! There are several possible causes, possibly the destruction of Gulf of Mexico currents due to the last oil spill, or a strong pressure ridge coming down from the north when this ridge historically is supposed to stay over Oklahoma and Kansas driving our monsoon in New Mexico. So whatever the case there is something that will push the moisture away from New Mexico this summer. This is disasterous, and some climetologists are pointing towards a revival of La Nina for the following years! If this prediction is true it will be the nail in the coffin for water supplies for much of New Mexican citizens!