Weather news in Arizona in recent weeks has included a phrase we don’t hear all that often here in the desert: tropical cyclones.

Several of these storms have been brewing on their way to the Mexican coast in recent weeks and, at the same time, we’ve been getting our share of monsoon rain here in the Phoenix area.

So, are the two related, and what’s behind the surge?

For more on that, The Show got a hold of Jon Gottschalck, he’s the chief of the Operational Prediction Branch at the Climate Prediction Center with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He started by breaking down what tropical cyclones are developing right now.