Rock Me Like a Hurricane!

What a whopper of a storm did we get last night! I have lived here my whole life and I don't remember a storm as severe as this one. At about 8:00 last night, the sky tore open, shaking our windows, the lightning and thunder were pretty much constant and the winds were unbelievable. We probably got about an inch of rain in maybe a half hour. It was insane, and at the time I had no idea just how out of control it really was.

So this morning we go out to inspect the damage, and find our roof looking like the picture above. That's not good... thankfully we didn't get any leaks, but we didn't want this to go unrepaired. Thankfully, my mother-in-law had recently given us a referral for a roofer they have known for a long time (we had already lost some shingles from prior storms) so Andrew got him on the phone this morning and he agreed to come out and got it all fixed up this afternoon. It worked out well because Andrew was already planning on being home because Ben still had remnants of a fever. Anyway, I packed up Josh and we headed off to school. After we got off of the freeway in Phoenix, most of the traffic lights were malfunctioning, or just plain not working at all. I was thinking that I didn't have a good feeling about this. Then I heard people calling in on the radio saying that schools that were close by to daycare were closed due to lack of power. Uh oh. Then we got to school and saw a downed light pole and found out that school was indeed closed for the day because they had no electricity. Too bad I didn't know that before I drove 25 miles in! But what can you do? So I took Josh back home and just worked from home for a good portion of the day.

I guess the destruction downtown was massive. Major arteries for rush hour traffic were closed down due to downed power lines (I believe there were about 10 on 7th Street), there were even multiple spots where large portions of roofs were laying in the middle of the street. There were reports of wind gusts of about 100 mph, and the practice stadium for ASU was completely destroyed. It was just crazy. Don't believe me? Check this out! http://www.azcentral.com/commphotos/azcentral/7667/1/69/

Thankfully the monsoon season is nearing its end. It has been a pretty impressive season this year. The storms can be kind of cool to watch, but not when they are causing millions of dollars of damage around the city. Hopefully this will be the last of its kind for quite some time.