Back to our Winter Home and the great Monsoon of 2012!!!

After a good stay in Las Vegas, we made our way back to our Winter Home on August 26.  The temps are still on the toasty side, but we have plans for construction on our lot and wanted to get a jump on all the other Winter Visitors.

After several days of the threat of thunderstorms getting nothing, Sunday Sept 9 one finally hit us.  It basically "steamrolled" us coming in with a vengence and passing by quickly.  Now we know first hand what a Monsoon Thunderstorm is!  No time to prepare - didn't think anything of the threat because of so many that had passed us by.

When it hit - it hit hard.  Thought for sure our flag pole would be history, but it survived.  The awning on our slideout wasn't quite so lucky - but luckily for us it doesn't seem to be too bad.  Nothing else on our lot was damaged - little did we know at that point just how lucky we were.  The power went out and after about an hour and checking stuff on Facebook we discovered that about 70 power poles in our area had gone down.  Some of the poles actually snapped off at ground level and I am sure that once one fell it became like a domino effect.  Many trees uprooted and other wind damage all around our area.  Lots of rain, but no flooding in our area - not the same in other areas of Yuma.  Not expecting the return of power anytime soon, we moved into the coach to be more comfortable.

Thank goodness for the coach!  We ran cords to the fridge in the Casita and the Freezer in the Garage and ran the generator.  Not only were we able to save all our food, we also were able to keep cool with the AC!  When the power went so did our water pressure - in fact we couldn't get any water out of the system pressure or not.  The water company here doesn't have any backup generators, so no power no water.  Fortunately we had about half a tank (50 gallons or so) of water in the coach, so we had no problems.  People without RV's and  those who did not have water in their tanks were out of luck - no water - no toilet!  We were sitting pretty just waiting for services to be restored.

Monday Sept 10 - here comes round two!  Another Monsoon Thunderstorm dumping lots of rain but doing no more damage than the one yesterday.  Once again, our flag pole was up and endured some strong winds, but survived fine.

Power was restored at about 8:30pm, but the water didn't come back until Tuesday morning (or maybe sometime during the night?)  We just stayed in the coach and enjoyed the cool air - opened all the windows and let the cool fresh air blow in - it was fantastic!

With everything back to normal - now it is time to get on with our construction projects!