What the Hail?!

Late yesterday afternoon I was sitting out on the patio having a chat on the phone with my sister, when the sky became very dark, and began to rumble.  I love thunder and don’t get nervous when a storm approaches.  In fact, I usually get really excited.  As many of you already know, I’m forever in awe of nature, and that includes severe weather – as long as there’s no real immanent danger. From what I had heard about the weather forecast, there was a chance of rain for the day, but there was certainly not any severe weather expected, so when I heard the rumbling I wasn’t the least bit concerned, and I commented to my sister how lovely the sound of the thunder was.

But then came another sound, one I had never heard before.  It’s hard to describe what kind of sound it even was.  It was like the wind, but at that moment there wasn’t any wind.  It may have sounded a bit like a train or an airplane or something, all I know is that it was weird and really loud.  Suddenly all my senses peaked, I got up and quickly made my way toward the door to get into house, as I said to my sister “Oh my gosh, what is that?”  “What is what?” she asked. “That sound, there’s a weird sound” I said as I opened the door to go inside.  When suddenly there was a huge gust of wind and the door flew out of my grasp, slamming against the handrail with such force that it broke the wrought iron rail free from its concrete base.  As I got inside and turned around struggling to pull the door to a close, I saw the lilac bushes along our driveway swirling around in a circular pattern and I said  “Oh my gosh, is this a tornado?”   Then instantly, gigantic golf ball sized hail started pounding down from sky, and it hadn’t even rained yet.  Just BAM, hail!   I’ve never seen such large hail in all my life, and began envisioning windows breaking and glass shattering everywhere, so I motioned to my mom and my daughter to get down to the basement.  My mom, who is always on alert during storms, had already grabbed her purse, my daughter grabbed her dog, and then one of our cats.  All I had was the phone in my hand, with my poor sister on the other end listening helplessly to the scene as it unfolded.  And it was quite terrifying.  Later she told me how surreal it was listening to me being so frightened, and how she didn’t like it.  I’m the calm one, you see.  Usually.  I think I still remained pretty calm, but I was definitely afraid.

When we came up from the basement, both my daughter and I grabbed our cameras and we all went outside to check things out.   Thankfully, there was no serious damage.  But look at the massive size of this hail…

Maybe it’s more of a ping pong ball size, than golf ball, but still… look at it, it’s freaking huge!

And look at our poor Rhododendron with all its lovely blossoms plastered to the ground…

When earlier it looked like this…

And I had captured this…

Their blooming time is already so brief, so it’s sad to have it cut even shorter, but I’m glad I had the chance to enjoy them while they were here.

The lilacs took a bit of a beating as well, as did the apple blossoms, but thankfully they’re both still pretty much intact, and I’ll be able to continue to enjoy them.  I’m especially happy about the lilacs because they are truly one of my most favorites of springtime, and even though my poem yesterday was about making love under the apple blossoms, it was actually the heady scent of lilacs in the evening air that inspired it.  Among other things, of course.  😉

Anyway, that hail storm was really unbelievable, the hail was so big, and there was so much of it, that it looked as if it had snowed.

There is a really big mess of debris out in the yard today from it too.  Which I should really get off this computer and go and clean up now.  But I’m very thankful that mess is only aftermath I have to deal with after such a frightening event.

 

And that I still have some of my most favorite spring blossoms to enjoy…

~

Hope you have some of your favorite things to enjoy today too!

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿