1/21/2010 …….and Dust was Everywhere!

We had been hearing about the “rain event” for several days but I don’t think any of us were expecting what we got.

Can you say torrential downpour? Can you sat WIND in all caps??

It started with the wind. I wasn’t out and about but my friends Don and LaVon were and I’ve captured some pictures from her blog, with permission of course, to show you what it was like here.

This is picture from I-10.

Look closely and you can see the outline of a mountain through the flying sand.

Here is a picture from downtown Casa Grande, see the tan color at the horizon? That’s blowing sand!

Heading back towards their place they passed this tree. This is what a sandstorm looks like. Oh the joy of living in the desert.

…….and it just gets worse.

This will give you an idea of how hard the wind was blowing. That dark section is thicker cloud of dust.

When we looked out the windows at our place we could see shingles from our neighbors houses flying by. Some lost quite a few. We were lucky and ours stayed in place. We did have some window leaks though.

And then the rain came….

It just poured! That in itself wouldn’t be bad but the ground here is not conducive to absorbing all this water in such a short amount of time. We had heard that the rain and wind were worse than they usually get during their monsoon season in the summertime.

There were several tractor trailers blown over on Interstate 10 and accident after accident because of flooded roads and zero visibility because of the dust storm.

One good thing, the rain cleaned the air!