what the hail?

yesterday afternoon i was talking to my dad on the phone and he said something about a band of thunderstorms that passed him,and even though he lives west of me, he lives significantly south of me, too, so when my sky got cloudy and then cleared i didn't think much of it, because he said it was powerful windy at his house.


you couldn't turn a pinwheel here.

and because of topography, often the bands of weather that cross this state divide neatly into above route two, between routes two and four, and below route four.

i live above route two. my dad lives between routes two and four.

and then after a number of complacent calm hours, all hail broke loose. the sky just turned black, with little warning and all of a sudden it was WINDY and all of a sudden we were being pelted with hail like i've never seen before.

i've seen large hail, and i've seen hail that accumulates, and i've seen hail that goes on for most of the afternoon, but i had never seen hail this big (dime and quarter sized) fall so densely for so long and stick so much.

i wanted to go out and put my car in the garage, but i was afraid i'd be hurt. it sounded like i was going to lose windows, from the pounding of it.

but of course i ran to grab my camera, to go out on the porch under shelter and LOOk at that thing.

of course all the neighbors did, too. nobody wanted to go out in it. everybody was worried about the cars. and everybody was on the porches.

along with the hail was buckets and buckets of water and nowhere for it to go so i wondered if i was finally going to get flooded, but after a little while the force of it subsided and it was just moderately heavy rain. and then some less impressive hail. and then more rain. and a little more hail. and then rain until late into the evening when the fog rose.