Residents of the Four Corners region spent Thursday surveying the kind of damage usually reserved for places that don't regularly hit 120F: blown-away roofs, trees on houses, and downed power lines, all courtesy of overnight tornadoes that injured one person. The injuries weren't life-threatening, but they were rare for an area better known for scalding heat - which is one way of saying the sky has decided to diversify its portfolio of misery.

This fall has been unusually soggy in the south-west, with El Niño conditions sending tropical system after tropical system in from the Pacific, causing the Grand Canyon and surrounding deserts to rage with floods. Now golf ball-size hail and tornadoes have joined the mix, because why stop at flooding when you can throw in a meteorological kitchen sink?

National Weather Service meteorologists suspect at least three tornadoes touched down as storms swept across central Arizona late Wednesday. The nasty weather hit during Lenna Landy's yoga routine in Overgaard, a community of about 3,000 people 140 miles (225km) north-east of Phoenix. Landy had ignored alerts about a possible tornado - a decision she may reconsider in the future - but then the storm struck.

"It was like Zeus-was-angry kind of level, of thunder cracks," Landy said. The power went off, her house shook, and Landy couldn't find her glasses. "If this is my end, I won't see it coming," she recalled thinking. "The scariest part was just like, how quickly it came on." The storm peeled off nearby roofs, shattered windows, and blew a shed into a home, she said. A spruce tree in her yard was split in half - nature's way of reminding us that it doesn't need a permit to remodel.

Still more severe weather, including large hail, struck Thursday, with much of Arizona under tornado and flood watches. Similar weather soaked New Mexico, while swathes of Utah and Colorado were under flood watches and warnings. Warm, moist air moving north fuels storms coming in from the California coast. Changing winds can make them spin, creating the conditions for tornadoes, said Ryan Bernhart, a weather service meteorologist in Flagstaff.

"This is very unusual for this area at this time of the year," Bernhart said - a sentence that has become the unofficial motto of the 21st century. Tornadoes are somewhat but not exceptionally unusual in Arizona. Notable outbreaks happened in 2019 and 2010, so it's not like the state has never seen a twister. It's just that they usually prefer their natural disasters with a side of sunscreen.

Strong winds toppled trees in Flagstaff and Mesa, with some landing on walls and carports. A few dozen ponderosa pines more than 30ft (9 meters) tall fell down in the Coconino national forest, north-west of Flagstaff. "These are not small trees that are down," Bernhart said. "These are pretty strong trees that had been knocked down." In other words, when the weather service says "unusual," it's not kidding - and your yoga routine is not a safe space.