By the Time I get to Phoenix
Located at the nexus of the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix has a population of 1½ million people but the Valley itself has a population of 4½ million people. This puts it in 12th place overall for metropolitan areas in the United States. The Metro Phoenix Area comprises fully 2/3 of the state’s population.
The Grand Canyon is a 4 hour drive (275 km/171 miles) north for those that want to take in some natural splendor. Monsoon season around Phoenix is apparently overrated, providing a few storms, some lightning displays, and then they go away.
Those storms, however, are responsible for the implementation of the Stupid Motorist Law, which places the entire onus on the driver to pay for all fire, police, ambulance, and towing extraction services if you happen to attempt to drive through the flooded washes.
Even though temperatures seldom even approach the freezing mark you still get Santa and ice-skating Nov 28-Jan 11 in the city’s downtown central rink with prices ranging from $8.00 to $15.00 per person, plus guaranteed snow showers between 7 pm and 10 pm in Patriots Park during the holidays.
When You’re Hot, You’re Hot
Almost always warm, almost always clear, daytime highs regularly exceed 38° C (100° F) June through September, though with humidity that seldom rises above 50%, dry heat is the order of the day.
Those coming from places like Texas, Louisiana, or Florida will find Arizona quite comfortable despite the heat. The dry air allows your body’s natural cooling system to work at peak efficiency. Aside from the artificial variety, snow is limited to less than an inch per decade. The azure-blue skies are available year round, and 85% of the time when the Sun is in the sky sunlight reaches the ground.
Of course people think that it gets a little too hot on occasion in Phoenix area but the people there just take it in stride for example have a look at this video and how they calmly explain how to handle emergencies.
Looking Around
If you would care to check out the stunningly clear skies you can go to the Arizona Dept. of Environmental Quality and observe zoom-able images of the five surrounding mountains including South Mountain, Estrella Mountains, White Tank Mountains, Camelback Mountain, and the Superstition Mountains.
If you want a closer look downtown this is your cam, but for a really good thorough look around, nothing beats traffic cams. Just click on your desired highway and choose amongst the dozens and dozens of cameras that update every ten seconds.
Being Informed
The Weather Network is ready to provide you with your daily, weekly, and 14-day forecast, along with warnings and watches in the event of severe weather.
Weather.com provides daily reports, broken down into hourly, if you need that level of detail. They also provide notes about what to expect on the weekend, and a cute little graphic showing sunrise/moonrise, the highest point in the sky that the Sun/Moon reaches and sunset/moonset over the course of the day as well as the current position of the Sun and Moon.
Naturally AccuWeather has a reasonably broad array of information including the video forecast, yet another version of radar for the area, and long-range predictions of major Continental Systems that could impinge on the area. And as always they have multiple sub-forecasts for things like the effects on migraine, colds & flu, allergies, arthritis, respiratory (asthma), sinus, and even how the weather is going to affect events, driving, air travel, or even if your hair is going to be frizzy.
One last thing
Don’t get lost at the airport! Sky Harbor Airport has signs indicating Terminals 2, 3, and 4, but you’ll never find Terminal 1. It closed in 1962 when Terminal 2 opened, but remained standing until 1991 when it was finally torn down. Soon they’ll be ridding themselves of Terminals 2 & 3 as well, once construction of Terminal 5 is complete.
Should the signs say “We have two Terminals: #4 & #5? Probably not—they’ve decided to go with the East & West Terminals instead.