Note: the following is also posted on the JeepKJ Country site.
Let me preface this story by saying I know people in the tornado and hurricane prone areas see worse damage than this, but this is the desert dammit
The worst we normally get is an occasional haboob:
Had a bit of excitement the past few days. Started Thursday night when I was at work. I went outside at lunchtime (7:30pm) to see what was going on with the clouds that had been building throughout the day. Looking south I saw a very intense lightning storm. It looked like one of those overly-dramatic storms you see in movies and TV with the constantly flashing lightning bolts, except this was not a movie effect - I don't think I saw dark sky in that mass for more than five seconds at a time and those times were not very frequent
I went back inside asking people along the way if their car windows were rolled up. Out on the production floor I was just getting some product started thru my equipment when the power went out (to a loud cheering sound). We all headed out to the break room and watched an incredible rain storm just pummel the town!
(Just tonight I went to the mesawx.com website and found this graphic of the lightning intensity:
The maximum rate occurred about five minutes before the power went out).
After about 1 1/2 hrs of no power it was decided to let us leave and I was fortunate enough to get out the door just before the power came back on . While I was waiting and watching the storm I called home and talked to my mother who mentioned that our power was out and it was 'quite windy' - she wins the 'understatement of the month' award I drove home thru darkened streets and had to backtrack one time because a eucalyptus tree had fallen across the street. When I got home I found that the awning I normally park under was in a bit of disarray:
Because of this:
About 50 feet away another eucalyptus tree had fallen on another of the car canopies, but I decided to wait for daylight to get pictures of it:
Looking thru the remains of the canopy:
In addition to this the building just to the east of ours lost a substantial amount of the roofing material, most of which wound up in the driveway and a neighbors yard (and up in the power lines):
In addition street signs were bent over, street lights were knocked out and in general it was just a mess. Throughout the night crews from the power company and the city worked to clear debris and restore power - I check around 1am and power was back on the south side of the street, an hour later the block west of us had power restored. I went inside to try and get some sleep hoping that when I woke up the power would be back on (HA!). We continued to wait thru the next day until I went to work, at which time my mother opted for a motel room for the night. I made it thru my Friday shift on about two hours of sleep then found a room at the same Motel 6. This morning we came home to find the power on (finally) but no AC - not a pleasant state in AZ during the summer. Luckily our landlord also runs an HVAC service company so it only took about 1 1/2 hrs for a serviceman to come out and fix the unit; it seems a stray branch banged the fuse box on the unit and caused a bit of mischief...
So now I sit in air conditioned comfort once more, able to enjoy my nightly fix of the internet and share this story with you. Here is a link to an article in the AZ Republic.
