aw, hail

This afternoon baby and I were taking a lovely nap while The Hater went grocery shopping. I woke up to hear what I thought was him rustling through the pantry. I decided to close my eyes and wait until I hear him bringing things into the kitchen before I was going to get out of bed. I must have dozed off again and awoke to a dark, dark sky and what I first thought was rain. Turns out I was only halfway right. It was hail.

(looking out the front door in the middle of the storm)

I immediately woke up baby. Fortunately this was while we were still getting the plink-plink hail and not the klunk-klunk hail we got later... Once I had her I turned on the news to see what Gary England had to say about it. Turns out it was just hail, not part of a tornado.

Next, I called The Hater to tell him not to come home yet. He was packing groceries into his car. He drove over to the gas station at Sam's to wait it out.

By this time we were getting golf ball-sized hail. It was really loud in the house.

(mid-storm hail)

(hail on the back porch about an hour after it finally stopped)

(The Hater showing off some of the hail. They were actually bigger than this when they fell - this was a little over an hour after it had stopped.)

The Hater came home after the storm passed the grocery store. In all we figure it hailed for about 20-30 minutes. We had golf ball and shooter-marble sized hail, but other parts of the city had baseball and softball-sized pieces.

(what's left of my pretty roses)

We were very fortunate.

I have a friend who lives about three miles from us whose home lost windows from the hail. The Hater's work has already cancelled work for tomorrow because of the hail (turns out hail and skylights aren't the best combination).

The Hater says on facebook he's seen that a ton of people have hail damage to their cars. When he heard that he'd be out of work tomorrow he was worried that he might need to go check on his office. Turns out the windows in his room were okay. (Which is good because we're expecting more rain tonight...)

Both of our trees have lost limbs, but not major limbs. The Spanish Sabre has lost limbs, too, as did most of our shrubbery. We're going to need more mulch for our beds. (I'm glad right now that I'd not put out new flowers yet for the summer.)

(This isn't snow, it's hail. The Hater took this picture from his phone while waiting under the gas pumps at Sam's during the storm.)

It's taken me over an hour to get baby down for the night. I hope the next wave of rain coming this way isn't saturated with thunder.