We have just a few more weeks left until we reach the official end of the monsoon season, and I have to say, it has been one of the better ones.

This year, the National Weather Service changed the way it designates the summer weather period. Instead of the prior system of having three consecutive days of dew points of at least 55 degrees mark the beginning of the season, someone came up with the idea to simply establish start and end dates based on the averages over the years, June 15 to Sept. 30.

Although Sept. 30 is the official end to the “new” monsoon season, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be the end of the evening thunderstorms for this year.

I remember having thunderstorms happening into October in 1965 (when I was commuting to ASU as a freshman in my old Volkswagen with the “hit or miss” windshield wipers) and again in 1972 (I was living in Scottsdale where my house had been flooded during a June storm and I still had sand bags that I used again in October when heavy rains fell from thunderstorms caused by the remnants of a hurricane that had moved into the state from the Sea of Cortez.)

We have had a total of 4.65 inches of rain so far this monsoon season. That makes it one of the wettest in years. And as of Monday, the week’s forecast was showing a chance of thunderstorms each day through Friday night.

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There’s another Town of Fountain Hills “Movie in the Park” on Saturday night. The movie is “Madagascar.”

Be sure to bring the kids and the grandkids to this animated feature.

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I had a lot of comments from people thanking me for my columns the past two weeks on my vacation in New Jersey. There sure are a lot of  people that are former residents of the Garden State.

One gentleman stopped in my office to tell me that he remembers the night Thomas Edison died. He was a young boy in Irvington, NJ. He recalls they dimmed all of the streetlights that night in 1931 to mark his passing.

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Congratulations to David Schweikert on his win in the Republican primary race for the 5th District Congressional seat. It  was a tough race with former Scottsdale City Councilwoman Susan Bitter Smith, who finally conceded this past weekend. Less than a thousand votes separated the two.

I’ve known David a long time and I know how it has always been his dream to serve the   people of Arizona in Washington.

He faces another tough race against the popular former mayor of Tempe and the man currently serving as our Congressman, Harry Mitchell.

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I want to remind all of you who have businesses in our town that it’s time to be thinking about your advertising in the Fountain Hills and Verde Communities Telephone Directory.

We did not increase advertising rates this year, and there is a five percent discount offered through Oct. 15. You have to have your advertising paid for by that date to receive the discount. 

And there’s another reason to get your ad payment in by Oct. 15. All of those who qualify for the discount willl have their business’name entered in a drawing for a free half page ad under any category you desire in the phone book’s Yellow Pages. We will be giving five of these ads away in the contest.

Good luck.