A wave is transitory.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary lyrically describes a wave as “something that swells and dies away.” Adding, when applied to climate, it is “a marked change in temperature: a period of hot or cold weather.”

The news this week is filled with reports of a “record-breaking heat wave” happening in the Northeast and Midwest.

“Around 270 million people in the U.S. will experience temperatures at or above 90 degrees this week as an impressive heat dome parks over the eastern US,” CNN reported.

Adding, “Hundreds of records could be tied or broken this week. Multiple all-time June high temperature records could fall … .”

Your heat wave is a heat tsunami in Phoenix

Other reports note that cities ranging from Chicago, Columbus, Albany, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., New York City, Hartford and Boston all could be dealing with temperatures in the 90s, with some computer models suggesting that some places may even exceed 100.For those of us who live in Arizona, where temperatures this week will exceed 110 degrees, reports of what other parts of the country refer to as heat waves are … wait … are some of you snickering?

I believe I hear some snickering here in Phoenix. That is not polite. Understandable, but not nice.

If you live in Arizona you know there is no such thing as a heat wave around here. It’s a heat flood. A tsunami.

The heat does not “swell and die” in the desert. It engulfs us, inundates us, drowns us.

Ed Abbey tried to scare you from moving here

And while climate change has made rising temperatures more difficult for other parts of the country — and here, too — it’s not like we are unaccustomed to it. Not like we don’t embrace it. Not like we don’t thrive in it.

As far back as 1976, the great Edward Abbey, author of “Desert Solitaire,” “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and other books, a man who lived near a dry wash in the magnificent desert outside of Tucson, wrote in an essay for The New York Times that read in part:

“Arizona is desert country. High desert in the north, low desert in the south, 90 percent of my state is an appalling burnt‐out wasteland, a hideous Sahara with clip‐joint oases, a grim bleak harsh overheated sun‐blasted goddamned and God‐forgotten inferno.”

Mayor is wrong: If you move to Phoenix, you will die

Abbey was nobly attempting to frighten potential settlers to Arizona. He was trying to ward off growth, to inhibit development. It didn’t work.

‘Nobody in his right mind’ would live here

Arizona boomed.

Abbey could not have imagined so many people who are not overwhelmed by the heat. Submersed by the heat. Suffocated by the heat.

He would be appalled, horrified and (secretly) thrilled to see that there are many of us who feel … baptized by it.

In his essay for the Times, Abbey summed it up this way:

“In Arizona, the trees have thorns and the bushes spines and the swimming pools are infested with loan sharks, automobile dealers and Mafiosi. The water table is falling, and during a heavy wind, you can see sand dunes form on Central Avenue in Phoenix.

“We have the most gorgeous sunsets in the Western world — when the copper smelters are shut down. I am describing the place I love. Arizona is my natural native home. Nobody in his right mind would want to live here.”

Yes. And we do.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Heat wave grasps the Midwest, but not in Arizona. It’s worse