Microburst likely cause of weather-related damage

by kristyk | August 1, 2008 at 04:50 pm

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While my husband and I were in Ruidoso surveying the damage from the recent flooding, we got a call from our kids. We had left them behind, thinking they would be safer. Little did we know a storm was about to hit Las Cruces. Power was out for quite a while and several houses down the street from 'grandma's house' were damaged. Trees were uprooted and the cactus at their house was blown down.

LAS CRUCES — Uprooted trees and downed power lines were the likely result of a microburst that hit Las Cruces Thursday evening, a National Weather Service official said.

"In most cases they're not strong-force winds. But in some cases we do get these sudden winds that can knock down trees and cause damage," said Greg Lundeen, a NWS meteorologist in Santa Teresa.

Thursday's brief but sudden storm packed strong winds, uprooting about a dozen trees at Mayfield High School.

Other parts of the city experienced power outages, downed power lines and, in one instance, a family temporarily trapped in their mobile home by a downed tree.

A microburst, according to Lundeen, is part of the basic mechanics of a storm. As a storm's strength is built up by winds from the ground up, eventually gravity takes over and the energy returns to the surface, in some cases accompanied by extremely strong winds.

That is likely what occurred in the Mayfield area.

"Trees knocked down over a small area is usually a good sign of something like that happening," Lundeen said.