It’s common courtesy in Arizona to, when witnessing any sort of liquid falling from the sky, post an update on social media to let people know you have witnessed that liquid fall.
Rain, hail, sleet or snow, our sunshine state is particularly obsessed with documenting weather events. That was particularly proven during Monday’s dramatic and relatively destructive thunderstorm, which affected several areas of the Valley, including downtown Phoenix and the central corridor.
Throughout my social circle at least, there seemed to be a large number of people posting photos and videos of the microburst. The most captivating footage came from my Snapchat feed, with friends sharing tragic videos of themselves stuck in cars, dealing with flooded bedrooms and encountering fallen trees.
Of course, storms like the one Monday night are no joke. There was a peak of 50,000 customers without power, according to Arizona Public Services. There were countless downed trees and power lines, along with 65 reported car wrecks, according to azcentral.com. By 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, there were still 22,000 customers left without power.
Progress is being made. Majority of remaining 22k customers w/out power should be restored late this afternoon or early this evening. 1/2
— APS (@apsFYI) September 1, 2015
This all sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it? The Valley experienced a very similar downpour almost one year ago to the day. That September 8 storm flooded the interstate and set a record for being the rainiest single day in Phoenix.
There was another storm that arguably affected the downtown Phoenix area even more, on the weekend of September 27 that same year. At the peak of that storm, which APS considered its worst of the year, there were about 50,000 APS customers without power. Yes, that’s the same number of customers that lost power in Monday’s storm.
There were other similarities to last year’s storms. Schools canceled class or started late, restaurants lost their power and shut their doors for the day, and parks (including the recently christened “A Space Between” park next to Taylor Place) were flooded and littered with broken trees.
Blitzkrieg storms like this are definitely infrequent, but there is concern that the city, private services and residents could have done a better job of preparing for Monday’s scare, especially with the damage we faced last September.
This is not to undervalue the tough job the city has after these tremendous downpours perform their hit-and-run. Gregg Bach with the Phoenix Parks & Recreation department said crews “cleared dozens and dozens of trees” from roadways Monday and Tuesday. Monsoon events are something they prepare for all year, he tells me.
“I think we did a pretty good job of handling that kind of thing,” Bach said. “What you’re dealing with is the volume of it, but I don’t think our plans necessarily changed.”
Monica Hernandez with the city’s Street Transportation Department also realizes the gravity of these storms.
“I wouldn’t go as far as saying we’re used to it,” she said. “We are cognizant that we’re subject to these type of activities.”
Thunderstorms like the aforementioned rarely happen in populated areas, said State Climatologist Dr. Nancy Selover. They usually happen in the desert, and only lately have they been popping up in urban areas like downtown Phoenix.
When it comes to designing cities to handle extreme weather, the standard across the country is for cities to withstand a 100-year rain event. Anticipating that these stronger and wilder storms will become a trend, California is now designing plans for a “200-year” event, Selover said.
“That may need to be the sort of thing that we have to do,” she said.
But updating all this infrastructure like California plans to do can be expensive. And if this becomes a major economic investment, it may be hard to find many people willing to make a radical change to our power lines or sewer systems.
The more immediate question is: Should we expect our utilities and services to respond quicker to extreme storm events?
After all, there was the same number of APS outages in both Monday’s storm and the one on the weekend of September 27, 2014. We should wonder whether those numbers should’ve fallen after lessons learned last year.
Or maybe the question is: Are we as residents taking the necessary precautions to mitigate flooding and outage damage?
The city offers its own storm safety list, which was not that easy to find on its site. The National Weather Service also has a detailed page of information for dealing with severe storms.
The truth is, both those questions are valid. Residents should prepare for downpours like these more often, and services could stand to think more critically about how to prevent unnecessary or extended outages and damages. As this year’s bookend storms showed, it might do us some good to think about how we want to prepare our city to handle strong monsoon events.
“It’s just something that happens with these storms,” Selover said. “They’re very violent, they’re very short-lived, and you never know where or when they’re going to hit.”
Contact the author at motarola@asu.edu
