[VickiesPath]

We've been having funny weather here the last few days. More rain than we usually get in a year.

Ever since I moved here 10 years ago, they've been talking about theses things called "micro-bursts". Oh, sure, I thought. Seeing the damage, I thought for sure they had to be tornados. But they say that the difference is the wind comes straight down and hits without swirling.

Last night, the wind came up, the animals were nervous, huge boulders were rolling down the mountain above us and onto our patio and suddenly, all hell broke loose. We were sitting in the livingroom and I thought for sure something was going to come flying through one of our three picture windows we have. We could hear things moving outside, I could tell things were being ripped off the house by the groaning noise.

It was over in about 15 minutes and after the rain stopped, we stepped outside. About 40 feet of our guttering had been ripped off and was hanging at the end of the house and the indoor-outdoor carpet had literally been ripped up (glued down) and was wound around in circles. Fortunately, the front porch furniture had wedged itself in the guardrail and didn't end up down the block. There were several huge boulders on our patio.

We found out that all planes had been grounded at the airport for several hours because they saw this one coming. Wow! I can see why!

[Elysium]

WOW!!!

Yeah, Microbursts can be VERY dangerous!! There have been several plane crashes due to planes going through thunderstorms and running into them.

What makes them worse than a Tornado is that the Tornado keeps moving and will eventually leave a certain area, whereas a Microburst only moves as fast as the storm cell so it could take a while to blow through...and if it stalls, that's even worse.

I'm glad that you, your Husband, and you house were okay...even though you did have damage...it's all stuff you can fix.

I think that if the weather folks can track these things so well to ground airplanes, they should put an alert on the TV and radio....or have some sort of Tornado type siren to alarm people to take shelter away from windows and stuff.

Glad you are okay...

Like many things, it is hard to imagine just how powerful the forces of nature can be until they are experienced. Glad no one was hurt.

[salukigirl]

That sounds like what we had in Carbondale last May. It was a wall of wind that got up to about 110 mph. My bf and I were in his car and pulled into a parking lot and just waited. It was terrifying. We watched entire storage units roll down the road. Roofs got ripped off and flew past his car. We came back to my house and my car had baseball sized dents from the hail and his car was totaled. Our campus had about 6 mill in damage and the city had about 8 mill. Its been almost a year and there are still signs of it. Felled trees everywhere - it was awful. That was the only time I was absolutely certain I was dead. Where he parked his car was directly blocked by a building and the only reason we weren't carried away. The wind actually picked his old SUV up and set us down several times.

I'm so sorry your area went through that. I hope it wasn't as bad as ours but either way it's terrifying. Even now, when we get a gust of wind I feel my heart start to race and I have like PTSD from that. Hope you and your friends and family are okay.

[salukigirl]

I lied...what we had was called a derecho.

[Hunny]

Heard that Arizona was going to get a blast a few days ago. Hope everyone living outside is okay.

There is unusually warm weather here. It is really mild and there are supposed to be Winter Olympics nearby soon. Hmmm, it is just one of those years.
.

[VickiesPath]

Guess what guys........this shook me up when hubby read it in the paper today. It WAS a tornado!!! NO JOKE! Someone sighted it on the ground about 5 miles northeast of here near a shopping mall...it's an area that's undeveloped and open so they could see it out in a field. I guess we just caught the exterior winds. Jeez! NOW I'm nervous. I've been through losts of tornados coming from the midwest but there we had experienced meteorologists and doplar radar. AND SIRENS!

[Naturefreak]

Tornandos scare the crap out of me. Just looking at them gives me a dark and eiree feeling. I can't see how these thrill seekers follow them around trying to get pictures and videos of them. Fortunately I'm in a part of the world that doesn't see them.

[sabby]

(((((((((((( Vickie & Hubby )))))))))))))))))))

I'm so glad that you are both ok and that your home only sustained minimal damage. I had heard also that there was a tornado in Arizona and I scratched my head thinking, boy this weather is getting stranger and stranger!