One strange gust of wind, one couple, and 20 shattered roof tiles.   

A Maricopa family came home this week to see what looked like the aftermath of an explosion on their rooftop. It wasn’t fireworks or falling debris from an airplane. It was a rare and violent blast of desert weather that plopped down on their roof and busted some tiles.   

Nicole Vashon and her wife Quiana were expecting a quiet day of work and backyard gardening. Instead, they returned to their Glennwilde home to find broken terra cotta tiles scattered across their lawn and a gaping hole in the roof above them.   

“We just saw smashed tiles all over the ground,” said Nicole in an interview yesterday. “So, we got a ladder and looked up at the roof. That’s when we saw this humongous hole.”   

Fortunately, the damage stopped at the surface. Whatever hit their roof didn’t punch below the wooden framing.

They called the police anyway.

Maricopa police officers who responded to the home confirmed the “underlayment” and attic structure remained intact. But the impact, which a roofer believes was caused by a microburst, displaced an estimated 15 to 20 tiles.   

Even the officers who responded were stunned.    

“They told us they’d never seen anything like this in their 20 years on the force,” recalled Nicole, adding that the microburst “must have hit twice; kind of skipped across the roof.”

Because microbursts can be difficult to detect on radar, the NWS urges homeowners to treat severe thunderstorm warnings with the same seriousness as tornado alerts, especially during Arizona’s volatile summer monsoon season.    

The event appears to have been hyper-hyper-local. No neighbors reported similar damage — not even next door — and no one even noticed it happen.   

“We thought maybe it was fireworks,” said Quiana, Nicole’s wife. “Or maybe a piece of a plane fell on the roof. No one else heard or saw a thing.”

Unfortunately, the damage is so small that their homeowner’s insurance won’t cover the repair costs. The deductible is higher than the damage estimate. The couple are now footing the bill themselves and waiting for final estimates from roofers today.

“We just want other homeowners to know this kind of thing can happen and to be ready for the unexpected,” Nicole said. “Keep a little money set aside. You never know when the wind might come for your roof.”