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People across Southwest longing for seasonal rainstorms

Around the Southwest, people are longing for seasonal rainstorms like a lost summer romance.
Credit: AP
FILE - In this July 16, 2014 file photo, what was once a marina sits high and dry due to Lake Mead receding in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Arizona. Extreme swings in weather are expected as part of a changing climate, something Brad Udall, a water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, has called "weather whiplash." The drought-stricken Southwest got a reprieve this year with average and above-average snowfall following a year that sent many states into extreme drought. Nearly empty reservoirs quickly rose, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest man-made reservoirs in the country that hold back Colorado River water. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

The weather pattern characterized by a shift in wind patterns and moisture being pulled in from the tropical coast of Mexico arrives like clockwork each year. It starts in mid-June and runs through September. Rain usually tags along.    

But this summer is different. The Southwest is parched.    

The Flagstaff airport is seeing its driest monsoon season in 120 years. Las Vegas has barely recorded any rain. St. George in southern Utah had none in July and August.    

Meris Carmichael wants to lure the rain to Arizona in a tongue-and-cheek way. She's been encouraging people to wash their cars - a perverse weather guarantee to ruin a shiny auto exterior with muddy raindrops.

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