The Monsoon in Prescott: What It Is Actually Like

Arizona’s monsoon has a reputation problem outside the state. People hear “monsoon season” and picture weeks of rain, then avoid the two months that are genuinely the best time to be in the pines.

Here is what it actually looks like.

The shape of a monsoon day

That is the pattern, and it repeats. You are not losing days, you are losing an afternoon hour and being handed a better evening in exchange.

The dates

The official season is 15 June to 30 September, a fixed 108-day window the National Weather Service adopted in 2008 to stop the annual argument about when it starts.

The calendar and the weather are different things. In Prescott the genuinely active stretch is July and August. June is usually still dry, hot and windy, which is why it is the worst fire month and, oddly, the best month to escape Phoenix. September tapers off.

Why it is worth planning around rather than avoiding

Three reasons.

The temperature. A storm can take an 88-degree afternoon down to the low seventies in under an hour. Prescott’s average July high of 90°F is a number you only meet on storm-free days.

The colour. The high country is brown and dusty by mid-June. Two weeks into the monsoon it is green, the wildflowers are out, and the creeks run. This is the prettiest the forest gets.

The sky. Watching a monsoon cell build over the Bradshaws from a covered deck is one of the genuine pleasures of a summer here, and it is the reason every cabin in this area has a porch you can sit under.

How to actually plan a day

• Hike in the morning. Be off the exposed granite at Watson Lake or the upper part of Thumb Butte by early afternoon. The pine trails south of town are safer later because you are not the tallest thing around.
• Do the lakes early too. Open water and lightning is the combination to avoid. See the lakes guide.
• Put town in the afternoon. Courthouse Plaza, Whiskey Row and lunch are perfect storm-hour activities.
• Never drive into moving water. Flash flooding hits washes and low crossings, and the water is deeper and faster than it looks. This is the one that kills people in Arizona every year.
• Expect the power to blink. Brief outages happen in a good storm. Both of our cabins have gas hot water and a wood-burning fireplace, but bring a torch if that bothers you.

What it means for the fire ban

The monsoon is what ends fire restrictions. Yavapai County and the Prescott National Forest usually go to Stage 1 in late May and lift somewhere between late August and the end of September once the fuels are wet. In a dry monsoon year, restrictions run the full term. The fire restrictions guide has the detail, and the short version is that propane is always fine and wood never is.

The honest downside

Two things.

Hail. Not common, but a strong cell can drop pea-sized hail and it will dent a car. If you are parked under trees you are mostly fine.

Humidity. The monsoon is the only time of year Prescott feels humid, and if you have come up from Phoenix specifically for dry air, June gives you a better version of that than August. The overnight gap with Phoenix is widest in June for exactly this reason. See the month-by-month comparison.

Where to stay

Both of our cabins have covered decks built for exactly this, plus a private hot tub that a rainstorm improves rather than ruins. Check the calendar, or see what each month is like.