August 2008 - Microburst at Our Apartment in Tempe

The week that we were getting ready to move out of our apartment in Tempe and into our new house, we had what we called a "microburst." It was monsoon season and it seemed that we got the worst of it that night. I haven't ever been in a hurricane, but that's what it felt like. Dan said that it kind of reminded him of the hurricanes that he lived through while on his mission. It was Doris' (Dan's mom) birthday and we had all gone to Tutti Santi's for dinner. It started storming but we all got home safely. Dan and I were just chilling in our apartment when it started to rain really, really hard. At the apartment we had weeping willows that served as shade trees where we parked our cars. The shade was nice however when there were big storms, the trees had a tendency to lose branches and hurt cars. So when we heard the storm Dan went out to move our cars so that they wouldn't get damaged. He was able to move one car and just as he drove away part of a tree fell right where the car was.........
















That is our door into our apartment as well.

Then Dan went to go move the other car and didn't see that this tree had fallen over. So he started to back up, but another branch had fallen where he had just moved that car. . . .































So he just sat in the car until it died down a little bit so that he could get out of the car without getting hit by a flying branch. He was able to finally get out and after the storm died down we moved the branch and were able to park our car behind the complex away from the trees.

We lost power throughout all of this as well. . .

















And a tree blew the fire hydrant over so it was spewing water into the street on the fallen down power lines.

We slept that night wthout any power and it took them about a day to get the power back on. It was all very crazy but grateful that now one was hurt. They had to close the street in front of our apartment down because of the fallen power lines. They had police there guarding it so that no one would get hurt. We couldn't drive anywhere. The next morning I had to walk to a different street so that I could be picked up by my friend and carpool to school. Crazy, huh?