On Tuesday, October 5 the Phoenix area got hit with a monster of storm, which included hail. The title is bit of play-on-words and I got the idea for the title earlier today when I heard a radio commercial for Courtesy Chevrolet. They are currently having a ‘Hail of Sale’ with price reductions on all the vehicles damaged by this week’s hail storm. Hail storms are fairly rare out here. In the 17-years I’ve lived in Arizona I’ve experienced 3 hail storms.
Hail on Balcony
It seems as if this storm was worse than the ones we had in January. May be part of it was we had a fairly heavy rain/wind storm the night before. That storm did some minor damage. The morning started off quite and clam. Then a little before noon the thunder started rolling and wind started picking up. Suddenly the sky opened up and the rain started pouring and the wind became even stronger.
Down Pour of Rain
I would say the heavy rain lasted may be 30 minutes or so before this was a break. This storm came in very suddenly and after the 30 minutes or so the sun was shining again. Since I had some time before I needed to leave for work I was able to get out and start taking photos. Didn’t have to go very far, just out my front door and down the stairs.
Flooded Parking Lot
While it hard to see in the angle was photo taken there are two trees involved over here. The tree themselves are still intact, just a couple large limbs broke off. Part of the reason the parking lot is so flooded, besides the heavy rain in a short period is because the tree parts are covering a run-off drain.
Flooded Dog Park
The community dog park also had some tree damage. The flooding in there is normal. The area is designed as a retention area and allows the water run-off from the parking lot. We did get another couple big storm later that day after I had left for work and one last small storm late that night. All told we got around 1.67 inches of rain and peak wind gusts nearby were at 75 MPH. Cleanup is still continuing as of today and there still a lot to clean up. All 12 photos are on my gallery (gallery.elguru.me) in the hail-of-a-storm album.
