The Rapture

Last night I experienced the most intense storm of my entire life. A microburst hit North Phoenix where I live and it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. Around 11pm last night I was watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and thinking about going to sleep soon since I work super early on the weekends. Just as I'm about to brush my teeth I hear the thunder outside and decided to go peek at the lightning before bed. The lightning was directly over our house and it was quite the show until quite suddenly there was a downpour and intense winds came. I got sprayed by a sheet of rain that came in and could barely see 10 ft in front of me when I see a critter run right in front of me. Since it was so dark I thought it was a cat but when it ran from me I saw its long snout and bushy tail and realized it was a raccoon!

I ran back inside the house to tell my mom that a crazy storm was brewing when the power went out. I had left the front door open and the wind was so powerful it was hard to shut it. Once I did we looked out the window and the whole house began to shake and we thought the windows were going to blow out. It was like the Rapture had come! All you could see outside was a wall of rain and flashes of light with thunder raging all around. I checked the backyard to see if the patio was okay and I saw the CHIMNEY LYING ON THE GROUND! Since we were down one chimney we had a gaping whole in our roof and the wind got inside and blew the hatch to the attic askew. This storm went on for what seemed like hours. In no time the house got swelteringly hot from the AC being off and the humidity made it so stuffy I felt like I couldn't breathe. I tried to go to sleep since I had to be up at 7am but I felt like I was going to suffocate from breathing in the hot damp air (which made me feel pretty anxious). My dad got home around 3am and I was still wide awake. He got on the roof to access the damage and found that the tv antenna had been mangled, many shingles had been striped off the roof and the swamp cooler had been trashed. Such a mess! When he walked around the neighborhood he saw that many trees had been completely uprooted, windows had been shattered and brick fences had been blown out! For the rest of the night all you could hear were police sirens and fire trucks.

I think I managed to get 2 hours of sleep. I had set my phone alarm to wake me up at 7am since our power never came back on. When the light woke me up I thought, "Nah, it's not time to wake up. My alarm hasn't gone off yet." Luckily, I did decide to check what time it was because it was already 7:10am!! I rolled out of bed and  threw my clothes on. I had to grab whatever snacks I could since nothing in the fridge would be edible now and was out the door. As I drove to work I got to see the carnage in the light of day. It looked like the Apocalypse had come. Huge trees were knocked in the road, streetlights were snapped in half and about 10 houses had their walls destroyed leaving their backyards completely exposed. I cannot believe that microburst was so powerful that it could annihilate solid brick walls.

When I got to work I got a call from a coworker who apparently lives in the same neighborhood as I do and she said that police had just closed down the road that leads in and out of my street and that if you leave your home that you can't come back in. So now I can't even get back into my house until (hopefully) late this afternoon/evening. Luckily, one of my besties lives right by my work so I'm going to hide out at her house until I get the green light that I can come home. Pretty intense, y'all!

At least no injuries have been reported but I am sad to say that the quail family that lives in my front yard had 6 babies as of yesterday and this morning there were only 2 :(