Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Hail!!

Last week DR was out of town for four days. Usually this isn't a big deal; I even look forward to some evenings where I can fix pancakes for dinner and watch a girlie movie in the evening without DR complaining.


But on Thursday the sky looked like this. I wasn't too concerned because we weren't expecting any rain. I figured it was a storm just blowing past. It was pretty though.

And then, lo and behold, it started raining! Yay! I didn't have to water my garden that night. I even took a picture of the rain to prove to everyone that we really do get some rain in SW Kansas..ha!

But then...clink, clink, clink. Hail!




I ran to the backyard....more hail...and it. kept. coming!



My backyard was full of hail! I'd never seen so much hail in my life!
Back in Indiana I can only remember a few times that it ever hailed and then it left behind barely a handful of little ice balls.



Funny, that a bunch of high school kids actually came out to play in it! Of course when the hail came in hard they ran back inside. Wimps.

But I admit, being at home by myself with the kids, I got a bit wimpy too. It probably didn't help that the boys and I had recently read that tornadoes often come with hail. I packed a bag of clothes and food and water and flashlights and had it stashed in the basement. And I was glued to the back door...just waiting to hear a tornado! I probably would have been smarter to listen to the weather radio instead huh?



It rained for an hour and hail fell on and off that whole time. No tornadoes or hail damage. Just a very wet garden, thank goodness.

But what was really funny about this whole episode was when I talked to my neighbors the next day. I was expressing how there was "so much hail in my backyard" and "how  I was waiting for a tornado", my neighbors just looked at me shocked. "That kind of hail storm is normal here! It happens all the time.", they said.

So, one more thing about Kansas that is very different from good old Indiana. Hail is normal! But just because it's normal doesn't mean I have to like it!


3 comments:

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  2. Hail makes me cringe! I am amazed your garden was not shredded by it. Those storms can really be a heart breaker for farmers. We are finishing the last of our planting tonight, but now the worry about too little/much rain and hail will be on until around late September. Crazy weather. It looked bad your way today. Be safe!

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  3. Last spring/summer we had SO. MUCH. HAIL. It was like every thunderstorm that rolled through brought it (which was pretty much everyday0. There was one especially brutal storm that left most people making insurance claims on their roofs and their now very dented cars with some even having broken windshields! I remember being home and watching the hail get bigger and bigger, so I asked God to please protect our car from hail damage and he did! :)

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