storms....

We were warned it was coming. But living here in the valley, we hear and we don't always believe. The storms don't always pan out like what they say about them on the news. If they say a 40% chance of showers - we get a drop or two. On Sunday we heard a bad storm was coming from the mixture of the wind from Mexico way and the rainy weather from California way. So, we got wind on Monday - pretty high winds. I thought woop-de-dee. Big deal. A normal Valley of the Sun storm. Then it hit. On Monday night we got a nice dust/rain storm for a little while. I guessed that was going to be it. Tuesday morning, more wind and rain. It would come quickly, more rain and wind, and then the clouds would just disappear. In 3 more hours another storm would hit - wind and rain, with some thunder and lightning thrown in. This happened 3 times. It became really intense around 2 pm on Tuesday afternoon. It was so bad that the students at Mesa High were told NOT to leave their 5th hour class and just remain in the classrooms for the rest of the day (one more hour). Bummer for Shannon because she hates her 5th hour - English. Her team had a vb game that they had to leave for around 3pm but that was pushed back 30 minutes or more because of the flooded parking lot and also downed trees and limbs blocking the exit. The school district had to send out men to saw up this stuff and clear lot.

These were taken about 3 hours after the storm when I came back to the school to pick up Shan after her game. You'd think I would just take her home from the school where the game was held. There are 5 of us moms that usually go to all the games, so we could just take our girls with us, but that leaves only 2 girls (if our sub- Maricella shows up for the game) to ride home on this huge bus with the coach. Awkward..... so we usually make our girls ride back to Mesa High on the bus and then just follow and pick them up there.

I drove to the school where she was to be playing and we had to wait an extra half and hour before they even arrived. (We parents didn't know about the parking lot). As I drove there I saw an enormous amount of down trees, broken branches and the likes - oh, even a storage shed blown up over the backyard fence in our neighborhood. The other moms had said we had two micro burst storms - which I believe, because these storms would come so quickly and then leave just as fast. So, on the way home from the game I took some pictures. Also, that night, we had Carolyn's boys over and another storm came on. We sat in the open garage and watched as it lightninged and thundered and HAILED!! Crazy. Oh, yeah the funniest thing, and I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of it, was when Katie slipped in our doorway (Shannon and her were going to run out in the rain quickly and then back in), but the entryway was already slippery from the rain coming in and she went flat on her face and stomach really hard. Too funny. So, Shannon posted this note to inform us all about possible danger.

Bless Shannon for thinking of us all.