things move around

I’m in Calgary where it isn’t raining. There is come cumulus cloud at 10,000 ft, to quote Auden, but it’s not raining. Non-rainy Calgary is blown-dry by the chinook coming down the mountain.

Is there a word for the absence of rain? For non-rainingness? Fine? Fair? Dry? They don’t seem adequate; even fine, fair and dry days have been rainy days in Vancouver, recently.

What I’m looking for is a word that describes the dizziness of a day without rain. The shock as your pores gasp for moisture, your skin cracks and crinkles and wrinkles and folds up like parchment, your brain shrivels into a dessicated puffball, your eyes turn to tissue paper, your ears, well you get the idea.