For weather nerds, waiting for the monsoons to start in New Mexico is a bit like being a kid in the back seat of a car on a long road trip, fighting the irresistible urge to continue asking, "Are we there yet?"

Well, on June 23, we arrived — a little over a week early.

So stop your whining.

"Yes, yes and yes," National Weather Service hydrologist Ed Polasko said with a laugh after a reporter repeatedly nagged him with the "are we there yet?" question.

The NWS powers that be have recently deemed that monsoon season lasts from June 15 to September 30, going against a long-standing trend of actually naming the date when the season starts.

Unofficially, though, a quick but powerful deluge that left several people stuck in an Albuquerque arroyo on Tuesday provided enough proof to indicate the season has started, and started early, Polasko said.

"With that June 15 to September 30 thing they were trying to do something similar to what the hurricane folks do, marking out a whole season," Polasko said. "So there's no more officially saying it started on 'X' day. But unofficially, yes, it seems to have started on Tuesday."

In past years, the July 4th weekend was generally the anticipated monsoon start date, Polasko said.

In 2006, a year marked by severe monsoon flooding in Alamogordo, Rio Rancho and Sandoval County, the monsoons also started early, sometime between June 26 and June 28, although that doesn't necessarily mean this will be a summer of strong monsoon rains, he added.

"So the 23rd is very early for us this year," Polasko said. "But there's no real way to tell for sure how strong the monsoons will be. Still, the fact that they started 10 days early indicates that they should at least be normal, and perhaps better than normal."

Precipitation for June at the Santa Fe Airport as of Thursday was 1.05 inches, which is above the 0.91 average for the whole month. With the monsoons kicking in and a few days left in the month, those numbers could go even higher, Polasko said.

"It's going to be an above-normal June all around Santa Fe and Central New Mexico," Polasko said. "But we're still behind average precipitation for the year to date. We're starting out between 50 percent to 65 percent of normal. A little above normal June won't help that much, but an early start to the monsoons does bode well for July and August."

The storms in early June were marked by a different pattern, and weren't able to drop as much precipitation in as short a time as is common in monsoon thunderstorms, Polasko said.

"The monsoons are also marked by a lack of west-to-east flows, which tend to dry things out," Polasko said. "We had westerlies in early June, but now I don't see any westerly flow to bring low dew points back and shut off moisture or thunderstorm activity."

Santa Fe also generally gets more monsoon moisture than our neighbor to the south. Monsoons like to form over mountains, and while Albuquerque has the Sandias to its east, Santa Fe is surrounded by mountains, which means more potential for rain, Polasko said.

"You guys have a lot of mountains," said Polasko, who works for the NWS Albuquerque office. "So your storms come in from all directions, rather than just from the east."

Polasko also said the public should pay attention to monsoon safety advice. That comes down to three main rules and common sense, he said.

"Any storm can produce heavy rain this time of year, and you want to be careful about washouts and things like that," Polasko said. "The second thing is that you have arroyos in Santa Fe — stay out of them. The third thing is that every storm is potentially deadly, because they can all produce lightning."

Beyond the warnings, now that the monsoons are here, weather nerds can stop asking that nagging question and just revel in the moisture, Polasko added.

"We got 'em, lets enjoy it," Polasko said. "This has already cut down on the potential for fires. Life is good."

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.