July 5, 2011--Estrella Pkwy & I-10
So one week ago tonight we had one of the biggest storms on record. It wasn't your typical "monsoon" dust storm...
Brent, Laren and I were stuck out in the mess as Laren had dance classes in Goodyear. We heard on the radio that it was heading our way. We called my sister and had them go online to look at the radar. It appeared that we would have enough time to wait until she got out at 8 and get home before it arrived. WRONG! As soon as we started out we could see the cloud but it looked like it was much further away than it was. So, we pushed on. As we drove it got worse and worse but still looked a good distance away.
We got about 3 miles from home when it hit. I was driving....my car. I have been caught in dust storms before but I have NEVER seen anything like this. It wasn't just dust blowing, or should I say drifting about 3-4 inches deep across the road. It was also grass, sticks, hay and whatever else was in the desert. It was blowing straight at my driver side door. We were so close we just kept going, very slowly. The area had no safe shoulder to pull over on, was on a curve and was leading up to a bridge.
We krept along at about 15 mph while getting plastered by tumble weeds, branches, dirt etc. We could not see past the front of the car. Out of seemingly nowhere this HUGE tumbleweed (or as I now refer to it, tumbleTREE!) bigger than the car came flying across and smacked the windshield. SCARY!!
We got home and the wind was fierce. We watched out the window as pretty much everything on our property was blown everywhere. I was shaken for hours after we got home. It was a very tense and scary drive.
When we got up the next morning it was almost comical to see everything on one side of the lot. Thank goodness we are fenced all the way around as we would have been still looking for things.
Then, I looked at the car....omg! It is so scratched :( and my logo/emblem thingy from the front is long gone ha. But, thank GOD we got home safely and no one got hurt. I heard there were accidents all over the valley. I prayed the whole way home and He got us home.
Needless to say, I will not be wanting to be out driving in any storms for a long time. LOL I always like driving in the rain. I even drove to Flagstaff in Oct. 10 when they had all those tornadoes, right in the middle of it, and that was not as scary as this was.
I did not get any pix obviously as I was a little busy. My arms were sore the next two days from trying to keep the car on the road. But I did get a few on my phone in the parking lot at dance before it all happened and I got some from July 3 when we had our first dust storm. I will share those on this post.
