What's happening in Phoenix this week?

Phoenix this week operates on a split schedule. The city reached 42.6°C this past week, and that kind of heat doesn't soften until well after sunset. Morning activities end by 10am. The stretch between noon and 5pm empties the hiking trails at South Mountain Park and Camelback Mountain entirely. You'll feel the asphalt radiate through your shoes on Central Avenue at 2pm. Phoenix resurfaces around 7pm, when Roosevelt Row restaurants drag tables onto the sidewalk and the air still holds 38°C but the sun has dropped behind the White Tank Mountains. This is also peak monsoon season in the Sonoran Desert. Most afternoons between 3pm and 5pm, a cell builds over the East Valley, the sky turns copper-brown with dust, and 15 minutes of hard rain can cool the air by 8 degrees or more. The petrichor off the creosote bush is one of the best smells in the American Southwest.

Saturday morning is the Phoenix Public Market downtown, open 8am to noon, where vendors sell Medjool dates from Yuma, tepary beans, and prickly pear syrup by the jar. Get there by 8:30am before the shade structures fill. Sunday mornings are quieter across downtown Phoenix. The Heard Museum (founded 1929) and the Phoenix Art Museum (founded 1959), both on Central Avenue, open Tuesday through Sunday, meaning Monday is their dark day. Plan Monday as a pool day or a drive to the Superstition Mountains, 65 km east. Weekday evenings in Old Town Scottsdale run cooler in energy than weekends, when the bars along Scottsdale Road and Marshall Way fill by 9pm. Thursday nights tend to draw the restaurant-industry crowd to the Coronado neighborhood, where spots along 7th Street serve $8-12 cocktails until midnight.

Your first-timer instinct in Phoenix might be to pack 8 hours of sightseeing into the daytime, but the heat won't let you. The Desert Botanical Garden on Galvin Parkway (founded 1937) opens at 7am in summer, and the saguaro trails are walkable before 9am when the temperature sits around 33°C. By 11am the garden's steel handrails will burn your hands. The Phoenix Zoo next door (founded 1962) also opens at 7am during summer. Save your energy for evenings on 7th Avenue. Dinner in the Melrose District starts late, 8:30pm or after, and the sidewalk patios stay tolerable under a mister. A Sonoran hot dog from a stand near 16th Street and McDowell costs $4-5 and tastes like bacon-wrapped mesquite smoke with pinto beans and jalapeño salsa. That's the meal to eat first, not the $22 resort brunch.

Monsoon storms are not background weather in Phoenix. Flash flood warnings close underpasses on I-17 and the 202 Loop multiple times per week this time of year. The National Weather Service office in Tempe issues warnings via wireless alert, and your phone will scream at you. Do not drive through flooded washes along the I-10 or 101 Loop. Arizona's 'Stupid Motorist Law' means the state bills you for your own rescue. Visibility during a haboob, the dust wall that precedes the rain, drops to near zero on the 101 Loop, and the fine Sonoran dust coats everything with a gritty tan film. That said, a monsoon sunset over South Mountain is worth rearranging your evening for. The sky turns deep orange and violet after a storm passes, usually around 7:30pm, and the temperature falls to 35°C. Find a west-facing patio on Mill Avenue in Tempe and settle in.