Yes Emma, This is a Purple!

Emma has become quite interested in weather. And since it's monsoon season around here, she likes to predict what colors our various storms will show up as on the weather maps. Her favorite to try to predict is definitely the purple storm. Even though she doesn't like the severe weather itself, she feels a sense of accomplishment after living through a storm that goes past the measly greens & yellows & reaches purple status.

So, it was interesting to watch the monsoon clouds explode over our neighborhood as we drove home from town this afternoon & tried to guess what color it would be on the radar. It was interesting, then thrilling, then concerning, and finally frightening.

As we drove down the road toward our home, we drove right into the heart of a massive storm that dumped incredible amounts of rain in a very short amount of time. Typical monsoon, I know. But this time we weren't home to see it, & I'm glad we weren't.

Because this is what we found when we drove up the driveway:

the coop used to stand right over that water dish on the ground

And this is what our little survivors were doing:

And this is the view from the corner of our property:
this is the wash that's usually on the OTHER side of those trees, about 75 feet away

And this is what our neighbor's property looked like. Almost his whole 3 acres was under water.

Don't even ask how we got home- we definitely became violators of the "Stupid Motorist Law" as our big 'ol Suburban came dangerously close to getting swept down a wash.

But only that one wash was scary.

All of the other 9 we crossed were a piece of cake. (NOT.)

I'm thinking that our chicken coop & the neighbor's fence were the victims of a microburst. Because that coop didn't get blown over. No, it was picked straight up & slammed down on the roof not more than 3 feet from where it originally stood. Good thing Andy spent 2 weeks building, reinforcing, & structuralizing that thing. (Is structuralizing a word?)

I would dearly love to know what our poor chickens are thinking tonight. What did they go through? Because 2 of them were inside the upside-down coop & the other 3 got a taste of freedom that they obviously chose not to indulge. Poor things.

Welcome to an AZ monsoon, girls.