The Docket's "Lived" section occasionally conducts interviews with composite characters — fictional people built from real reporting, public records, and documented patterns. Dez Abril is not a real person. She is, however, standing on a real rooftop in a real city where the National Weather Service issued its earliest-ever extreme heat warning in March 2026, and where a real operations director pulled her patio heaters three weeks ahead of schedule because spring stopped showing up on time.¹ Everything Dez describes is happening. She just doesn't exist yet. Give it a year.

We meet on the rooftop of a craft brewery in Phoenix's Roosevelt Row Arts District on a Tuesday evening in late March. The misters are running. They shouldn't be, not for another three weeks by the old calendar. Dez Abril, the general manager, is wearing a Suns cap pulled low and drinking water, not beer. She's been on her feet since 10 a.m. The temperature at 6:30 p.m. is 97°F.

You pulled your patio heaters down on March 16th. That's early.

Dez: Two and a half weeks early. We usually keep them through the end of March because you get those nights where it dips into the low 60s and people want to sit outside with a jacket and a stout and feel like they live somewhere with seasons. That's the fantasy we sell, right? Phoenix has this window, October through March, where the weather is genuinely perfect. Patio business peaks. The heaters are part of the whole production. Sun going down, little chill in the air, a heater glowing next to your table. It feels like a destination.

This year the heaters came down and the misters went up in the same week. That has never happened.

Is that a logistics problem or a psychological one?

Dez: I mean, physically, my guys are hauling propane tanks down the stairs while the mister crew is hauling lines up. It's a Benny Hill sketch. But the thing that actually sits with me is the calendar. We had a prep calendar. Had. Every year we'd tweak it a little. Two years ago we moved mister installation from mid-April to early April. Last year, last week of March. This year it's March 16th and I'm calling our vendor saying, can you get here tomorrow.²

You can only move a date so many times before you admit the calendar doesn't describe anything real.

The city moved its splash pad opening from May 23rd to March 20th. That's a two-month jump in a single season.³

Dez: And they restricted hiking trails. In March.⁴ I saw that and thought, okay, so I'm not being dramatic. The city is doing the same math I'm doing. They're just doing it with splash pads.

What does your math look like?

Dez: Five, six years ago, our best months ran November through April. Six months of prime patio. Now it's more like November through mid-March, and then you're gambling. October's still coin-flip. So call it four and a half good months. Maybe four. The summer months have always been a hit, but the shoulder seasons carried us. If the shoulders keep shrinking...

(She pauses, looks out over the railing at the street below.)

I keep starting that sentence and not finishing it.

There's something strange happening with your customers right now, though. I've been hearing that people are going out more because they know summer's coming early.

Dez: Oh, completely. March has been gangbusters. Packed every night. People are out here in 95 degrees on St. Patrick's Day ordering pitchers like it's their last weekend of freedom.⁵ And honestly, they might be right. If someone told you it's going to be 105 by the third week of March, which it was, and then it stays that way or worse until October, you'd go out now too.⁶

So my March revenue is up. And my stomach is in knots. I'm watching people preemptively enjoy my patio before they abandon it for six months.

Your best week is also your warning sign.

You grew up here. Your parents ran a business here.

Dez: Landscaping. My dad's been putting in desert gardens since the '90s. He used to plant palo verde trees and tell customers, "This is what belongs here." Now half his work is ripping out stuff that can't survive anymore and replacing it with rocks and shade structures. He's fine. He adapts. That man would adapt to the surface of Mars if someone handed him a shovel.

But he said something at Thanksgiving that stuck. He said, "I used to work with the desert. Now I work against the summer."

I think about that every time I'm up here scheduling mister maintenance in March.

Do you think about leaving Phoenix?

Dez: (Long pause.) I think about what leaving would cost. I've got twenty-two people on staff. Regulars who come every Wednesday. A landlord, a lease, and a rooftop that six months a year is one of the best places in this city. The other six months it's a liability with a nice view.

But go where? Portland hit 116 a few years back. Austin can't keep the lights on when it freezes.⁷ Everybody's running from something now. At least here I know what mine is. It's on the thermometer every morning by 7 a.m.

What's the plan for this summer?

Dez: Extended evening hours. Happy hour starts at 7, runs till close. The temperature drops 30 degrees after sunset here, so by 9 p.m. it's actually pleasant.⁸ We're looking at better shade structures, bigger fans, maybe evaporative cooling walls. We'll survive the summer. We always do.

But every year when I say "we'll figure it out," the figuring out costs more and covers less. And I've started wondering whether the thing I'm adapting into is still the business I wanted to run. Because there's a version of this where I'm running a nightclub that serves beer, open four hours a day, six months a year. That's a business. It's just not my business.

Is it still your business?

Phoenix's 2026 Heat Response Plan, released February 27, formally acknowledges that the city's operational heat season is under pressure from earlier and longer extreme heat events.⁹ The plan builds on two consecutive years of declining heat-related deaths in Maricopa County, though the March 2026 heat wave arrived before most seasonal response infrastructure was activated. As Dr. David Hondula, director of the city's Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, noted: "Flexibility is really important."¹⁰

Dez Abril's misters would agree.

Footnotes

1. AZFamily, "March heat wave pushes Phoenix patio businesses to adapt early," March 17, 2026. https://www.azfamily.com/2026/03/18/march-heat-wave-pushes-phoenix-patio-businesses-adapt-early/ ↩

2. Kate Ashby, director of operations at Pedal Haus Brewery, described the same accelerated timeline: "We're kind of just making those preparations and trying to get our misters ready and prepped for the season… usually we wait till April." AZFamily, March 17, 2026. ↩

3. City of Phoenix newsroom, "Phoenix to Open Splash Pads Early Due to Extreme Heat," March 2026. https://www.phoenix.gov/newsroom/parks-news/phoenix-to-open-splash-pads-early-due-to-extreme-heat.html ↩

4. City of Phoenix Heat Response Plan page, confirming hiking trail restrictions March 19–22, 2026. https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/heat/heat-response-programs/heat-response-plan.html ↩

5. AZFamily reported that St. Patrick's Day 2026, "normally prime patio season," saw crowds gathering in 90°F-plus temperatures across downtown Phoenix. ↩

6. The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning for the Phoenix Valley from March 19–22, 2026, the earliest such warning ever issued for the region. The previous earliest was April 26–30, 2020. Temperatures reached 105°F by March 21. AZFamily, March 16–19, 2026. ↩

7. Reference to the February 2021 Texas power crisis and Portland's June 2021 heat dome, which produced a record 116°F. ↩

8. Phoenix can see temperature differences of more than 30°F between daytime highs and nighttime lows during summer, driving a shift toward later dining hours across the city's hospitality industry. ↩

9. City of Phoenix newsroom, "City of Phoenix Unveils Robust 2026 Heat Response Plan," February 27, 2026. https://www.phoenix.gov/newsroom/heat-news/city-of-phoenix-unveils-robust-2026-heat-response-plan.html ↩

10. Dr. David Hondula, AZFamily, March 19, 2026. https://www.azfamily.com/2026/03/19/phoenix-outreach-teams-respond-triple-digit-heat-in-march/ ↩