Gettin' hot here in Benson...

It was inevitable. Southeast AZ gets hot starting about May and, other than the occasional T-storm during monsoon season, it stays that way into mid-September.

Rain across the San Pedro Valley from our RV park. The mountains in the background,
the Dragoons, are 12 or so miles away.


SKP Saguaro Co-op (our RV park) is at about 3,600 ft elevation. Not enough to make for a cool summer environment but (no pun intended!) it beats the hell out of being in Tucson. In a good year we'll hit over 100°F occasionally, but in a bad year we'll see temps over 115°F... ugh!!

And that's not too bad compared to a few other places: the day we hit 115°F, the city of Phoenix briefly hit 137°F. That can't be healthy for any living creature!! That same day Death Valley hit 138°F. I would kinda' expect that outrageous temp in Death Valley, but in Phoenix? Really?!

I'm not a weather historian (is there such a person? maybe the US Weather Service comes close), but it appears to me we're dealing with fallout from global warming. I have a hard time believing Phoenix hit 137°F a hundred years ago. In 2022? Yeah that was real. But in 1900 when my grandfather John Oscar lived here it did not. If the temps had been that high back in the day, I seriously doubt the population of the greater Phoenix area (includes places like Scottsdale and Apache Junction) would be at the current 4,950,000 hot, sweaty, stinky souls!

Benson with its year-round population of about 5,100 might see a little over 115° on a really hot day. But as global warming affects all of the world with higher summertime temps, the big influence in summer temperature extremes is still altitude. Which suspicion prompted the following bit of research into average high temperature vs. elevation...

Frankly I felt a little better about where we live after seeing this. I thought the averages in dear old Benson would be in the 100s during June thru August. But there we are: in the high 90s. Guess past spouses were right: I'm a wimp! And you better believe if they had a Safeway and a health clinic in Bisbee I might be inclined to lobby for moving there!

Oh... and monsoons produce very few rainy days... maybe 5 days in June and 10 days in July. I thought it would be closer to 20 rainy days in both July & August but no joy.

And here's an oh-by-the-way tidbit: notice the slight tilt of the valley floor in the photo above? The San Pedro River Valley floor is not horizontal in the photo above. The valley floor is slightly higher on the left of the photo than the right. The valley has a steady decline in elevation from North (on the left in the photo) to South. That slope, small as it is, is what enables the San Pedro River to flow from Arizona into Sonora, Mexico. And the San Pedro is the only river in the USA to flow South into Mexico.

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