Just your everyday monsoon blows through city

If Wednesday night’s monsoon thunderstorm didn’t awaken Maricopans, they certainly knew about it once they got out of bed.

According to Wunderground.com, the thunderstorm brought 9-mile-per-hour winds with gusts up to 33 miles per hour and about 0.13 inches of rain, all of which wreaked havoc in residents’ yards and neighborhoods.

“I think our trampoline is permanently traumatized for being so disturbingly violated last night,” Jamie Willoughby Lambert said on the InMaricopa Facebook page. “I still love storms, though.”

Shauna Wickes woke up around 10:30 p.m. and realized her Chihuahua was with her under the covers growling because of all the commotion outside.

“I woke up from a big boom and thunder and lightning,” Wickes said.

When she went to investigate a loud crash outside her home, she found her patio water fountain broken in the backyard.

Carmelita Dorsey, in Tortosa, woke up to what she called a “dream come true,” a new pool in her backyard. Since it was just a kiddie pool, she added, “It’s a little small, though.”

“I guess we will have to put up a ‘Found Pool’ flier,” she said in an email. “You don’t find those every day.”

Andrew Marine, also commenting on Facebook, said the storm “tipped over our barbecue in Maricopa and it was a fairly large barbecue.”
Many residents, also commenting on the page, said they found the streets covered in debris, some from upturned recycling bins — for the residents of Senita, it was recycling day — or just plain trash.

For other residents, the disturbance was more subtle.

Jason Weltch posted a comment simply stating, “The tumbleweed in my backyard is now on the other side of my yard.”

Although the storm left plenty of damage behind in people’s yards, from a public safety standpoint it rather non-eventful.

Maricopa storms generally are most dangerous for residents traveling on roadways because the two greatest threats brought by monsoon weather effect drivers the most: flash floods and massive clouds of dust, said Brad Pitassi, Maricopa Fire Department spokesman.

So his department and the Maricopa Police Department brace for the vehicular collisions that often occur when summer storms break out.

“In a matter of minutes you can have visibility that goes from miles to inches,” Pitassi said. “A total brownout.”

Neither MFD nor MPD reported any extensive damage, and although a downed power line was reported, both departments responded to the call and one was never found.

“Fortunately on this storm, we didn’t respond to anything,” Pitassi said.

The police department, however, wasn’t quite as fortunate.

Although officers did not respond to any calls for assistance or accidents, they did respond to 10 false alarms, all of which “we can attribute to the weather issues last night,” Officer Ricardo Alvarado, MPD spokesman, said.

Some of the alarm systems responded to what appeared to be front-door security issues — “ with the wind, the doors move like someone’s pulling on it,” Alvarado said — and others were triggered by what the system believed to be a broken window due to the wind rattling panes.