On Wed, 9 Jul 2003 16:40:22 +0000 (UTC), in rec.gardens.roses you
wrote:

Cass wrote in news:080720031950517945%
:

In article , J. Del Col
wrote:

From what I could see last night the worst hit were my R. moyesii and
R. xanthina. They used to be BIG shrubs; now they are modest bushes.

Ah well, the roses will probably recover, but the garden layout will
never be quite the same.

Recover, hell! They'll probably grow like demons just from a hard
prune. So...you got more sun, right? And it missed the house? Whew.
Those of us in earthquake country feel lucky sometimes. What's with
this microburst I keep hearing these days? We don't have them or not
often enough to know any better.

I don't think they're common in California. Here's a page describing them:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/events/windshear.html

Microburst are often so powerful that they cause damage commensurate
with tornados. Sometimes, it's only experts that can tell the
difference between the rotating winds of a tornado and the
straight-line winds of a microburst.

I would expect microbursts to be rare in California, since strong
thunderstorms are probably pretty rare, right?