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Missouri had mosquitos and so many snakes! I hated it.
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Most places have their share of bugs, spiders, and snakes. It takes a long time for the water to even get to a safe temp to touch! So. The kids wanna play in the hose? That's not happening you might as well throw a pot of hot water at them in that case. If you want cold water, you have to store it in the refrigerator. People throw ice in the pool to try and cool it down. All summer long, we take showers using the coldest possible water that will come out of the shower and it is still hot. The inside of the house is so much cooler than the outside, so you get cooler water for awhile using the hot side instead of the cold. You get hot water out of the cold tap all summer long that is actually hotter than the hot tap. Since the weather rarely gets cold enough to freeze anything, the pipes aren’t buried very deep in the ground. The tap water only gets as cool as it is outside. This is something I just never thought about, either. Us locals are so happy when the temps start falling even in to the 90s. Some things you learn the hard way (ouch!). I didn’t wash my car for 3 months last summer because the outside of the car was so hot I didn’t want to lay my bare arm on the sizzling hot metal to pay in the drive thru. Those big fluffy oven mitts you have in your kitchen? We keep them in the car for driving gloves because the steering wheel and any metal you have to touch on your car will burn you. But you know what? During the summer, it doesn’t cool down at night! It is still so damn hot! I sleep with an ice pack. I remember learning in school that it gets COLD in the desert at night. They are all indoors laying naked under the fan. Either way, I'm hiding inside with the A/C. For me, I don't feel like there's much of a difference between 100 and 120. Here in Arizona, once it reaches 100 degrees, it’s just so damn hot. Most people live in a place where it gets hot in the summer for a few months with at least a little bit of relief during the night when the sun isn’t blazing down. You’re thinking, “how hot can it possibly get?”, but you really don't want the answer. The temperatures start to climb in April and don’t come back down until October. You prepare with your typical shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. You expect it to be hot during the summer. I have figured out that when people ask me how long I have lived here, what they really want to know is how many summers have you survived so far? It is so much lighter once they all leave! Yes, it's really 120 degrees. The traffic is the one nice thing about summer here. Who wouldn’t want the luxury of having a house to escape to when the snow starts flying and then get to leave again when it starts getting too hot to handle? Old folks come and go in flocks like birds, which is where the term “snowbird” comes in. With the exception of the storm season, the humidity is super low it is the desert, after all. They have a saying here in Arizona: You don’t have to shovel sunshine. You'll have swamp ass for half of storm season! Add the humidity to the heat and you have a recipe for what feels like a swamp. Believe it or not, though, when all of those summer storms hit, the humidity comes with them. When you think of the desert, you think dry dry dry. For the people that are experiencing it for the first time, it can be very scary. For those that have lived here long enough, they know that these storms are just part of a typical summer. Roads flood in what seems like minutes, but they dry up rather quickly, too. Huge established trees were ripped from their roots and toppled over. Neighborhoods are built with washes specifically for the flash floods that happen every summer. We sat in our dining room during one of the storms because the power was out and watched the lightning for a couple of hours. Trampolines flying out of yards, roofs being ripped off, power outages (no air conditioning and it’s 110), flash floods, and amazing lightning storms are all from haboobs. I know people get scared and hate the storms but they're just beautiful! Haboobs and rain are my favorite parts of Arizona living. Last summer, in addition to the occasional haboob, there were several storms that were strong enough to knock out the electricity for hours at a time. I love boobs but, uh, haboobs? Ha…what? A haboob is a “violent wind and sand storm that comes on quickly and decimates visibility and other things in its path”. There are some things I wish I knew before deciding to move to Arizona. People like to visit us during the winter to escape the snow. Our hummingbird feeder is busy every day of the year.