I made it through my first Monsoon!

So.. I will post more of my personal story in a day or two.. but I lived through my first monsoon. It was crazy! - here is a story from the local news-

Monsoon storm tears Mesa palm trees in half, damages homes-

Many East Valley residents are cleaning up Tuesday after a monsoon storm left debris spread throughout the area. Hardest hit were mobile home communities with metal, trees, branches strewn around. Phyllis Payne lives in a mobile home community near Broadway and Recker roads in east Mesa. She's from Illinois and told ABC15, "...we're used to tornadoes so therefore this was just like sitting through a tornado warning, only it just happened so fast."A large metal strip was embedded in the side of her home. She thought about how bad it could have been. "It could have killed them. Had they been out in the storm, it could have, if it could have pierced through metal, what could it have done to the skin?"
A brief power outage Monday night seemed small compared to the massive damage and storm debris left behind at the New Hope and Park Place mobile home community in Mesa. The community near Recker and Broadway roads suffered some flooding. Winds ripped people's awnings, carports, siding and roofs. Several palm trees looked like they had been sawed in half with a chain saw; winds had torn them apart. Several trees and cacti blocked roads within the community. People who live there told ABC15 they thought the winds sounded like a tornado or a hurricane.

Oh... by the way. The streets they mention Broadway and Recker are 1 block from me!


another story... the aftermath

Power utility crews worked Tuesday morning to replace downed power lines after an isolated monsoon storm slammed the East Valley Monday. Salt River Project workers used cranes to remove toppled poles and get ready to replace them. A crew member told ABC15 that one of the power lines brought down carries 69,000 volts, enough to light up two square miles. If one had come off a pole, it would have snapped like a rubber band, according to a worker. SRP officials expect Southern Avenue near Power Road to be closed for the rest of the day Tuesday.

Mesa took the brunt of the storm, with winds exceeding 60 mph and 50 lightning strikes within a 30-minute period.Winds were so powerful, the SRP power lines knocked down near Southern Avenue and Power Road trapped seven vehicles and a city bus. Emmett Hood and his wife were driving home when a power pole snapped and fell onto their SUV. It smashed the hood, shattered the back windshield, and came within inches from hitting them. A Mesa Fire Department spokesman said nine people were trapped in the vehicles. Only one person was hurt from broken glass.SRP shut off power to those wires, but those motorists were trapped for 45 minutes before officials said it was safe for them to get out of their vehicles. At the height of the outage about 10,000 SRP customers were without power due to those downed power lines. Tuesday morning, only about 400 remained without power. The storm dropped .87 inches of rain in Mesa, blew over power lines and lifted roofs of mobile homes. Roofs and awnings were blown off a mobile home park in Mesa, while AZ Car Care’s windows were shattered and their business flooded from Monday’s storm. There were no official reports of a microburst hitting the area, however it is highly likely. The National Weather Service will be looking into it.The storm started in the southeast Valley around 7 p.m., hitting Queen Creek and Gilbert. The storm brought a lot of dust, heavy rainfall at times and plenty of lightning.Like most monsoon storms, this was very isolated.