Wind and Rain and Hail, Oh My!

On Monday we had our first tornado watch of the season. It was pretty warm, in the 70's, and the watch was going on all day. We had been having wind advisories, too, all day, with winds around 30-40 mph, and gusts up into the 50's. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, the lightening and thunder started, and with it came the rain, and boy did it come down. And then it turned to hail. I was getting extremely nervous about this time as I watched and heard up to one inch hail pound my house and yard. The street turned into two little rivers, as you can see in the video. It was almost time to get the kids from school, but I didn't dare drive my car for fear of the damage the hail would do to it, plus I was pretty sure they wouldn't release the kids until the storm had passed. Fortunately, the hail didn't last long, turned back into rain, and had almost stopped again by the time I left to pick up kids. It was truly frightening for a while there. I wasn't ready to have to deal with tornadoes yet, so I was glad that they never materialized.


I have never seen hail this big, so this was a first for me. The dark object in the center of this picture is a penny. I couldn't find a quarter for the life of me to get a better scale on size.


This hail stone was much bigger than a marble. I was trying to find something to put beside it for comparison, but again I came up empty. You might have to imagine a good sized one inch steelie to get a good idea of how big this one was.


Also, I'm pretty sure this was done by one of the hail stones. Shane isn't sure, but I don't remember seeing broken siding here before, and I sit here everyday it's warm to watch the little boys play. I'm just glad the damage wasn't worse.


This video isn't very long, but you'll get the idea.