Microbursts are basically like a mini hurricane/tornado without the sucking up of buildings and it only lasts for a very short time. They only happen in areas that are not conductive to hurricanes or tornadoes. They almost always happen when two or more storm fronts crash into one another and have no way to slide past each other. Since Arizona has super flat land that absorbs all the heat, when fall comes around we get incredible cooling vs heating action and gigantic storms are a result. They call it a monsoon. Sometimes monsoons crash into each other and we get microbursts. Btw a smaller microburst hit the Phoenix area over Chandler AZ the same week as this Tuscon film.
Ok microburst story time. I have been in two so far.
The only eventful one I have been in was while I was working at the Phoenix airport in 02. We had 3 storm fronts converge right over the airport. Now normally in Az a storm consists of 10 to 20 minutes of sprinkles followed by 10 minutes of super hard, soak you to the bone, rain. Then it tapers off and in less than an hour we are done with a storm. Well, this night it rained about medium hard for about an hour. I guess the storms were fighting to get around each other with little success. Finally the rain got really hard for about 10 minutes like normal and about the time I expected it to die down, it got WAY FUCKING WORSE! The rain was so thick that I couldn't see the planes at the end of a 60 foot jetway from the windows. And then the windows which are about 10 feet tall from floor to ceiling started to flex and shake and make horrendous noises like the fist of God was beating on them. I actually thought they may explode in. You could hear the rain hitting the roof that was another 2 stories above us. After about 15 minutes it finally died down and went back to light rain then about 20 minutes later stopped all together.
After it was over I walked to all 4 prongs of the terminal to check it out (our terminal is shaped like a fork with the prongs being where the planes dock). One whole prong was evacuated and full of smoke. Two others had huge leaks from the ceilings and crews trying to clean up the water pouring in. We had 3 planes that had been pushed around and facing the wrong way at the gates or backed to the taxi line. Commercial airplanes that can transport between 126 and 153 passengers. The worst for us was a Boeing 757 which seats 190 passengers was spun clockwise at the gate a full 90 degrees. the reason it stopped at 90 degrees is that the wing crashed into the jetway and basically destroyed it. This is where the jetway controls are and it smashed them and started a fire, hence the smoke in the terminal from when they opened the doors to the jetway to go put out the fire.
We got off easy. A few hours later I got to see the "executive" parking section which is on the outskirts of the airport. This is where all the private jets and general aviation planes park. All the smaller ones. There were close to 20 planes there that night and not a single one of them was where they started the night. Some of them were pushed up against the fence still on their wheels. More than half of them had been flipped and thrown every which way. So many planes on their roofs. One plane was even sent over the 8 foot chain link fence and landed in a grassy area not 2 feet from the road that runs through the airport.
It was pretty brutal and many delays and cancellations happened that night. I remember I had to stay an extra 2 hours just to get the line of people from canceled flights set up with hotels for the night.
Oh and here are some pics from the small airport in chandler getting hit this past week or so.
See how the yellow one is tied down still at the tail? they think it got picked up turned on its side and dropped on the wing where it rolled back to its wheels. All from the wind.
That top pick is what it looked like in 02 at executive parking only add another 15 or so planes.
