What the Hail?

There’ve been some “weather events” in our area over the past week or so. We’ve had some heavy rain, some strong winds, and then five minutes of intense hail one night. The news warned of tornadoes, but none appeared in our city.

The hail came down with a roar in the middle of the night, and it woke our whole family up. I’ve only heard hail like that one other time, about four years ago — and it then only lasted about five minutes, too. It’s kind of cool to hear that sound. It’s a steady drumming and thrumming all over. If one didn’t know what it was, I could imagine it sounds like some kind of rapture.

The first thing I did when I could get outside the next morning was to check for any damage, but there wasn’t any. There was no evidence that it had hailed at all. Hail is pretty rare in our area. I’ve only seen it, that I can remember, that one time before, four years ago.

If you’ve seen the news last week, you’ve probably seen the reports of tornadoes in some Southern states. I remember the “night of seven tornadoes” around my hometown, back when I was in high school. Our school was closed for a couple days afterward while they checked for and fixed the relatively minor damage. Fortunately, there was very little damage in our town, but several areas in the county were severely torn up. We drove around and looked at some of the damage, and I can still remember seeing a car upside down in the woods just off the road, a roof torn off a house, and many trees (mostly pines) snapped like toothpicks.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com