Wednesday evening began like so many others here in Tucson. On this night, we ate dinner, and then went to the bookstore. Around eight o'clock, we made our way back home and noticed thunder and lightening way off over the mountains. This is not that uncommon and happens probably four nights out of the week. The evening news says there's a flash flood warning, but there's always a flash flood warning, and it's not even raining. As we're going about putting Lillian to bed, I hear something like knocking on the window. I look out and it's rain mixed with hail. Soon, the wind picks up and is blowing so hard, it's making all the windows shudder and rattling the blinds.
The thunder is really loud and Lillian's starting to cry. Tyler tells her everything is alright and puts her in the bath. Five minutes later, the lights go out. And stay out. Lillian is freaking out, I'm thinking, "Great, another bad bath memory," and Tyler is stumbling around trying to find a flashlight.
As Mom says "Big rain: little rain, Little rain: big rain," (meaning that if the rain comes hard and fast, it won't last very long, but if it is drizzly and light, it will hang around awhile) so the rain stopped after maybe two hours. But it for sure left it's mark. In the picture below on the left, there used to be two trees standing close together. You can see one is still standing, right next to it, what looks like a bush, is actually the bottom of the tree, uprooted, with some branches covering the roots.
We didn't get power back until after dinner on Thursday night. I was dreading not having air conditioning, but it didn't get that hot in our house. Lillian was devastated that there was no "Little Eimsteims" to be had all day long. We saved most of our food as the power company set up a booth to hand out free ice. I'm not sure about the eggs though: with the ice in the fridge, the moisture content of the air went up, and then when the power came back on, everything froze. Including the eggs. I haven't cracked one open yet, but I'm scared. Mom and Allison thought they'd probably be OK, but I'm not convinced.
We had to climb our way out to take Tyler to work. They've mostly got it all cleaned up. There were a lot of birds in the trees that got booted out and/or injured in the storm. The neighbor's dogs got out and made short work of them, much to my neighbor's VERY vocal protestations.
5 comments:
I forgot that when one lives in the desert, architects think one would want to remember that.
Nice Adobe.
Wow, that's intense. I would have been very worried (read: panicked) about the no A/C thing and I am glad that it all worked out.
PS I wrote you a letter about a month ago, but I just found it behind the couch. I sent it last week, so that's why it's really late.
No Little Eimsteins?? We mispronounced that show too. At least the storm provided some much needed excitment to your life in Tucson, although you might have chosen a different kind of excitment.
I always wanted a big storm like that. Well...maybe not losing the electricity. But the trees falling over and the loud thunder is really cool. I feel bad for another scary bath tub experience for Lillian. Who really needs a bath anyway :)
that is scary!!!
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