Microburst In Our Neighborhood - Microesplosione Nel Nostro Quartiere

In Italy, America is known for having extreme weather. I have just experienced a taste of it with a microburst that ripped through our side of town! This is the second microburst that East Arlington has received since we moved here two years ago, when we discovered that our house is situated in a high flood risk zone. Crazy.

I wanted to take William on his scooter around the neighborhood on that day, but I decided to wait. The sky was filled with dark clouds. It was intimidating. After lunch, we started hearing the sinister thunder. Half an hour later, it stopped and there were no more signs of the coming storm.  

I decided to wait. Later, Tronk and I looked outside the window, hoping to see a better sky, the one that says "you can go out now". We saw instead, a leaden sky with a large dark portion which was getting darker the more we were looking at it. 

I decided to wait and bear with Tronk's repetitive question: "Dov'e' il temporale?" (Where is the storm?)  and my constant same answer:"Non so dov'e' andato!" (I don't know where it's gone!)

We were fed up with being at home. We needed some fresh air. The thunder was back but the storm was not coming. The afternoon continued with us wondering when we could finally make our way out of the door.

Finally, John came home and we all left for the mall a little before 6 pm. As soon as we left in the car, the storm started and by the time we hit the highway, I felt we were in a submarine! When we arrived at the mall, it was all nice and dry and I regretted not leaving the house with Tronk early in the afternoon.

A couple of hours later we came back to the house and found a surreal scene: trees down across roads, power lines down and tree branches everywhere. 

Below are the images I captured the day after, after much of the cleanup was already complete. I had to help Tronk push his scooter across tree branches and leaves scattered all over roads and sidewalks. If this had happened in Italy, there would  have been loads of old ladies in the street complaining, sharing their personal stories and asking questions. Here, a bunch of locals eager to take photos.

Thankfully, our house had no damage. And our inflatable swimming pool was still in the yard, lying against one side of our house, exactly the way we left it.