Of thunderstorms in the desert...

Hi!

As most of you know, I’m currently in Arizona and working on getting my Master’s degree from Arizona State University. Recently I was telling someone this and they asked if I’d traded rainstorms back home for sandstorms here. Did I?

I’ve been here for almost a year now and I’ve seen sandstorms (or ‘haboobs’ as they’re called) three times. Out of which two were mild ones. Whereas I’ve been caught out in thunderstorms countless times - full-blown thunderstorms with winds of over 60 mph (96.5 km/h). Though dangerous, they do sometimes make for pretty skies for photography:

With a drive of under 2 hours, Saguaro National Park in Tuscon, AZ makes for a quick getaway from Phoenix, which was exactly what we’d been wanting for a while. And since the forecast called for cloudy skies, we figured it’d be a good day for hiking. Unfortunately, whoever was in charge of weather for the day didn’t get the correct memo. Right after our first stop (a now-defunct Cold War-era nuclear missile site at the Titan Missile Museum), a full-on thunderstorm popped up and we were forced to take refuge in the parking lot due to abysmal visibility. We considered heading back home since hiking in the mud would be very challenging. But I figured we’ll see if there’s a silver lining somewhere and headed to the Park.

That silver lining was my personal “Photo of the Month” for July - the Sonoran Desert beautifully framed by the window of an ancient Native Indian hut!

So, yeah, I didn’t exactly trade thunderstorms for sandstorms, but rather modified their ratio of occurrence a bit…

On second thought, there’s a high chance this photo will probably be my “Photo of the Rest of the Year”. Classes start in 2 days, so there won’t be much in the form of travel for the rest of the year.

Oh and reading! I recommend Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings (Book #1 of The Stormlight Archives) to anyone looking for a new high-fantasy world to dive into. I recently finished it and loved every bit of it. Can’t wait to start with book #2 Words of Radiance. but before that, doing a bit of non-fiction reading in the form of Austin Kleon’s Share Your Work. It’s about how to put yourself out there as an artist and what you stand to gain. So far, it’s been great.

As always, thank you for your time! See you all next week!

-Aravind