When the monsoon hit Tucson the first full week of school on a Thursday, many people only had a flicker of darkness, but hundreds were left without power and some even had damage done to their homes and vehicles. Even our own Cougar Den, Sahuaro, had a several fallen and uprooted trees, a collapsed score board, and a broken gate.

How deep will it get? What will happen when it gets on the wires or the other electronics? These were just some of the worries that math teacher, Mr. Wells, had while in his classroom. He said he “had to mop four times, but every time he mopped, it would just rain some more.” He said that in total, there were probably around two inches of rain and he joked about being worried that he would drown from the amount of water on the floor.

“This is the worst storm I’ve ever seen hit Sahuaro,” said Mr. Lundstrom, one of the assistant principals. While the storm was rather violent, the district was very quick to respond and was clearing out trees the next day.   The gates and water damage, however, may take a while to be completely fixed. In the bus bay on Camino Seco, a large tree was so uprooted, that even the cement and bricks around it broke apart.

Sahuaro, of course, wasn’t the only one to get hit with damage. Woodridge Apartments, which is located about five minutes away from Sahuaro, had dozens of fallen trees and were even forced to condemn some of their apartments because of the magnitude of damage.

While Band teacher, Ms. Engels reported damage to her car, luckily, there were no injuries reported and Sahuaro, which opened almost fifty years ago, will not be knocked over by a freak microburst.