The Storm

Our house was hit by something major yesterday afternoon.
I swear it was a tornado!
I have lived here for 18 years.
I've experienced microbursts, haboobs, dust storms and many monsoons.
This was something different!
We were sitting there expecting a dust storm, and as it hit I knew something was wrong.
The sound was like none that I have heard before.
First I saw a huge tree fall over into our yard,
then when I saw our large BBQ grill be picked up and blown across our yard I grabbed my baby (Caleb grabbed Mia) and ran to the opposite side of the house.
It was over in only a few seconds, and the damage was severe.
Poor Mia was crying and really freaked out.
We were all pretty shaken up, but nobody was hurt.
We calmed Mia down and then went outside to survey the damage.
Here are some pictures of the aftermath!

Our patio furniture was blown into a pile by the back door

 The view from outside our wall

 All of the debris that was strewn around

(we lost so many roof tiles, they were shattered all over the place)

 The grill that I saw fly through the air!

 Our swimming pool.

Full of patio furniture and roof tiles!

I was on the phone with the insurance company right away.
Caleb went into the attic to see how bad the damage was, we could see our roof tiles everywhere!
Unfortunately he could see day light.
Not good.
We had major holes in our roof!
We put buckets up there and Caleb did some temporary fixes until we could really check things out the next day.

In the  morning we went outside and started the clean-up process.

Mia felt very proud that she was able to help clean up.

She kept saying "This is really bad Mom."

 Despite my protests, Caleb got on the roof to see what it looked like in the light of day...

 Here is some of what he saw

Not good!

It is going to be a while before things get put back together here.

Let's hope this isn't a precursor to an extra active monsoon season!

***A few days later on the news I heard the weather man say that what we had were called "Gust-nados" (pretty sure he made that word up!). But he said that essentially we were hit by a major dust devil. The only difference between that and a tornado was that tornados start in the clouds and come down to the ground and what we had started on the ground and worked it's way up into a funnel cloud.Whatever you call it, it stinks and sure did a lot of damage to our home and neighborhood!