You Might Be A Red Neck...microburst

Today was a little different as far as Sunday goes. I had stake conference so I was able to enjoy a leisurely Sunday with no extra meetings.

I must preface my tale with a little weather report. We've been experiencing an unusual amount wind - wind mind you, not breezes. Not just today either, but for the past several days. It is rather unusual and it has been pretty intense at times. So today was a windy day.

Now back to my story...I was sitting downstairs watching TV and I hear this load rushing, grumbling noise coming from outside (and it was VERY loud), from what would be behind the chimney. What immediately popped into my head was how all those "red-necks" on tv always say that they hear what sounded like a train coming towards their house and then next thing they knew "a terr-nado come swipped my trailer clean off its foundation."

I yelled to my mom who was up in the kitchen, "Mom, I think there's a twister or something outside." We both ran to the large window in the dining room because it has a better view of the backyard.I can see all the trees and bushes just blowing like crazy and then I see our flatbed,toy hauling trailer which is parked on the side of the yard picked up and dragged across the backyard. Flipping over the top of that trailer is our tarp awning which normally covers the camper trailer, and it's being tossed end-over-end across the yard. After a few seconds things settled down. My mom kept saying, "that must have been a dust-devil," which we do occasionally see here in AZ. But I was pretty sure it was more than a dust-devil.

We went out back to see if anything was damaged. Come to find out that the pop-up camper trailer, which was hidden around the side of the house, behind the chimney, had been dragged around the side of the house and was now partly in the grass. It had taken a corner out of the cable box. Then, when the flatbed-trailer was dragged across the yard it took out the ladder to the playhouse. AND, several slats from the side-yard fence were torn off. And that was just in the back-yard. After we moved the camping-trailer back around, I grabbed my camera and got a few shots.

The red circle is where the trailer was originally parked. The wind didn't just push it over to its new location. I actually saw it bounce its way over there.
This is after I moved the trailer back to it's original location. The square it where the backend of the trailer ended up. It scraped along the side of the house and put a small dent in the back of the trailer. And in case you've never pushed one of these camper-trailers, THEY WEIGH A TON!

I circled the where the fence slats went missing and drew a line along the tire skid marks where you can see the trailer had been dragged.

After surveying the damage out back, we went to the front yard. Of course our poor tree in the front yard lost a few limbs. In fact as I was taking this picture, the wind was still blowing and you can see a small branch is falling off to the left.Fortunately for us, no one was parked in the driveway. If they had been, this is what could have happened to them...tree limbs right through the window.

So all in all in were very lucky, but it did make from some interesting Sunday afternoon excitement.