Hail

We have had some crazy storms up here in the past month. I don't remember the last time we had so many intense thunderstorms in such a short time frame.

A few weeks ago I was home with the kids and Brian was golfing in Saratoga, about 45 minutes north of us. All day long he and I were texting about the weird short bursts if downpour. Around 5:30 another downpour started up but this one sounded very different. I took a look out of our front door and this is what I saw:

HAIL! And a lot of it! We rarely have hail so it's always fun to watch. I grabbed the kids and explained to them what was happening. After about 5 minutes I realized it wasn't easing up. At all. In fact, it was really accumulating.


And after I took the shot below I realized my plants were on the verge of being frozen to death by this bizarre hail.

I had Lily hold the door open while I ran out and grabbed the incredibly ice heavy pots. By the time all of them were safely in the house I was drenched. Not just dampened by the rain but I was DOUSED BY TORRENTS OF RAIN AND ICE.

As much as I was trying to dry off after my rescue mission my main efforts were focused on keeping the dirty hail out of Jamison's mouth. From what I can tell he assumed this ice was a dessert item and the dirt from the plants was a kind of crushed cookie topping.

In order to remove Jamison from the dessert buffet in the entry way I took him into the garage to watch the last of the rain falling. It was then that I realized how crazy the rain had been. Our street was flooded. Our neighbors told me this hadn't happened in 10 years.

There is a boy below riding his bike and the water was coming up to his knees as he was peddling to his father on the opposite side. I called Brian and gave him a heads up about the flooded street so that he wouldn't drown attempting to get home.

So I had diverted Jamie from the hail and now he wanted to go swimming in the street. I couldn't win.

To try to save him from swimming the channel I brought him and Lily to the front of the house. I couldn't believe the amount of hail.

The kids decided the hail must be shoveled. Jamison was very diligent about shoveling the hail into the little compartment on the back of his red bike. Unfortunately I only found that out a few days later when I lifted the bike up to move it and melted hail spilled all over my pants.

It was only after Brian got home that he told me that our house was the only house with hail. No other houses in the neighborhood had been bombarded. It was as if there was a little hail cloud that sat over our house and dumped it's entire warehouse on us.