Fair weather fan

I live in Phoenix. We pretty much have the same weather all year long. It's called sunny and clear skies and we rarely experience "severe" weather (well, outside of the deathly hot summers that last until October). Sure, we have the occasional dust cloud, or spot of rain, but most of the time what hits one side of the valley, doesn't make it to the other side before dying out.

When we do get rain, the weather forecasters treat it like a miracle event.
"This is Kristi Kappes, reporting live from 1st Avenue and Van Buren. I confirm there have been rain sightings. And yes, what is that near my foot? It's a PUDDLE! Yes! Go in for a closer shot!"
Really. I'm not joking about this.

So this week our fair city actually experienced some REAL "severe" weather--we even made CNN with some tornadoes that touched down near Flagstaff (you know its big news when CNN covers it--they don't usually cover "puddle" stories).

Yes, I did get caught in the rain and the hail and the limited visibility last night. Thankfully I was in my vehicle (rather than out without an umbrella). Unfortunately I was already running late for class and my commute across two major freeways took more than twice as long as normal. But I was proud of my fellow drivers--people who aren't used to driving in any kind of condition other than sunshine and clear skies. Drivers were cautious and courteous and I arrived at my destination safe and sound and was thankful for that.

The skies had cleared (well, it was dark, so I can't say for sure) and it wasn't raining when I left class and drove home-- though some areas of the freeways were dark due to power outages, there were, thankfully, no long lines of traffic.

I don't think I realized until this morning, how much yesterday's storm impacted our city. For example, on the news this morning the traffic reporter on local TV recommended avoiding the freeway I normally take (due to an early accident) and provided two surface street alternatives. I headed out on one of the surface streets, drove 66 blocks (it's about 95 blocks to my office), and found that the road was closed due to fallen power lines. I headed south to the other surface street and a long 4 blocks later discovered that the stoplights were out and a major intersection was being managed by a 4-way-stop. And I had to turn across traffic. Super fun (but I did see some new sights, as recommended in this post).

But the real impact came later in the day when I received an email from my car insurance provider that said that their claims experts "are on alert" and "here for me" as a result of severe storm damage in my county.

Now I'm paranoid that my car has hail damage and that because of my sever-weather-history (trips through blizzards to North Dakota and over snowy mountain passes in Colorado), I brushed off the events of last night. Maybe I need to embrace the frenetic-Phoenix-weather-phenomenon.

Then again, maybe not.