Tornadoes

       We travelled to the town of Flagstaff this weekend and surveyed the Tornado damage. They had five Tornado's hit around Flagstaff, Arizona  in one day. Some were 1 hour apart. We drove 10 miles west of Flagstaff and to the small town of Belmont, which was hit the worst. Two hundred homes were damaged. Twenty eight were destroyed completely. This was new housing community. One home had rowboat stuck in the roof.These  residents took shelter at the Circle 6 Motel which was close by the homes.
       They were given shelter for free from the Motel. Many back yard wooden fences were torn down.The siding was ripped off many homes, the garage doors and windows were broken. Their car and truck windows were smashed. The Mountain behind the Town had path of destruction, where the tall pine trees were torn down. As we saw the devastation, we realized we were blessed to only the minimal damage we had at our home. Our Mayor visited this area and she said help would come from the Federal Government. Several Damage and Construction trucks were busy helping repair the damage already.

       Then we saw the Train which was derailed. Twenty eight train cars were thrown off the tracks. Most were double piggyback cars which we saw laying on the side of the Railroad tracks. They had started building a road to get to them , so they could get them up righted on to the railroad tracks again. There were huge cranes there to help pull up the trains cars.

The Worst Storm in 27 years.

     Wow !!   We had a MICRO BURST today, we had a violent  thunder, lightning, tornado wind, torrents of heavy rain, then came the massive hail stones, the size of ping pong balls. This made a lot of noise, pounding hail stones this size coming down with a 75 mph wind blowing them sideways.
     
     This storm did a lot of damage in our area. Our Camper was flooded,and all the window screens were destroyed and the clearance lights of the front of it were torn off.  The visibility was very poor during the storm. I was glad we were not out in it.
   
      North of Phoenix the town of Care Creek had hail stones the size of baseballs. Interesting inside the hail stones, you could see two little hail stones, which I had never seen before.

      The houses around us all who had sky lights, had them all broken. Shingles were ripped off the roofs. Our street turned into river instantly.
   
      Our truck had the side mirror broken,and another mirror on our other car. Our roof top air conditioner, had the vents dented so bad, that the air couldn't flow out of it. Several large trees toppled over in our neighborhood. Many landing on top of cars or homes. A large tree fell over, and one really large one, fell on a Van parked under it when the Van with  a two year old boy and his Dad in it, took refuge, under the tree to get off the road during the storm. 
    
      Even the freeway was flooded so much there was only one lane of traffic getting through. The power lines also came down across the Valley. Some landed across the main freeway. This brought the five o'clock traffic to a complete standstill for two hours.
     
     The Grand Canyon University, in Phoenix had 6o windows broken, the car lots had all the cars metal damaged by the large hail, plus broken car windows. Power was lost for central Phoenix area for 20,000 homes. The hail bouncing in the swimming pools were making the water jump 2 1/2 feet high from each hail stone which hit.  It was very interesting to watch. 
 
     In the Flagstaff area there were 4 Tornadoes, which destroyed several homes and derailed several train cars.  We had four waves of wind, rain, and hail today. finally it is over.