A microburst damaged some of BBB's home windows

In 2009 in Albuquerque, we had a terrible wind and rain storm. The next day, I saw that the wind had ripped off the plastic strips that frame around the frames of my rear wide living room windows, which run from roof to floor. Three tall windows and three small upper windows. Some of the strip were on the ground. Others were hanging from the windows.

I asked my neighbors if their windows were damaged. None of them found any damage to their homes. I couldn't understand why my neighbor's home were not also damaged. My research discovered that my home had been damaged by a microburst. It's like a small narrow tornado and it slammed into my windows with great force.

On August 1st this year, during ABQ's monsoon season, we had another bad wind and rain episode. I was sitting in my living room and I heard dripping water. I went to my windows and found water raining down on my floors and my furniture. The water was not dripping or running down, it was raining down on my furniture two feet away from the wall.. I did the best I could to absorb the water to protect my sofa, table and carpet. I called my dear friend and handyman, Michael, to tell him what had happened. He came to my house the next morning and was shocked at what he found. My windows were about to fall out of the house wall because the previously damaged window strips could not keep the windows in their place.

To make a long story short, Michael has been working for four days to buy strip replacements, caulking materials, stucco material to repair the damage stucco on the outside of my house, and make all the repairs on the windows and the exterior stucco. He was frustrated by and had to undo the terrible caulking job done several years ago. He stood for hours on his tall ladder to reach the high windows and a shorter one to reach the lower windows in ABQ's summer heat. Michael is a rare gem and charges so little for his work. He will only take a thousand dollars for his time and materials. If I had hired a contractor to make the repairs, it would have cost me several thousands and the quality of the work would not have matched Michael's perfectionist work.

Michael is wrapping up the repairs today by cleaning the outside and inside of the windows and washing the tile under the windows and in the house and sweeping the patio and removing any sign of the work. How was I so lucky to meet Michael several years ago? I introduce Michael to the Lady Diane and Dyslexia and he's been doing all of their work for several years. Michael was the buyer of Dyslexia's Porsche this year because he loves to restore old cars. When he get all the restoration done, he will take Dyslexia for a ride.

BBB

What is a Microburst?

A microburst is a very localized column of sinking air, producing damaging divergent and straight-line winds at the surface that are similar to, but distinguishable from, tornadoes which generally have convergent damage. There are two types of microbursts: wet microbursts and dry microbursts. They go through three stages in their life cycle: the downburst, outburst, and cushion stages. The scale and suddenness of a microburst makes it a great danger to aircraft due to the low-level wind shear caused by its gust front, with several fatal crashes having been attributed to the phenomenon over the past several decades.

A microburst often has high winds that can knock over fully grown trees. They usually last for a couple of seconds.

When rain falls below cloud base or is mixed with dry air, it begins to evaporate and this evaporation process cools the air. The cool air descends and accelerates as it approaches the ground. When the cool air approaches the ground, it spreads out in all directions and this divergence of the wind is the signature of the microburst. High winds spread out in this type of pattern showing little or no curvature are known as straight-line winds.

More about microbursts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microburst#Danger_to_buildings