Baseball anyone?

When we lived in Oregon, I heard lots of stories about baseball-sized hail, and the devastation it caused, from my Mennonite friends who had come West from Kansas and Nebraska. I found it difficult to imagine what hail that size might look like.

I no longer have to imagine what hail that size might look like (that's 25-cents there in the middle.)

  

A very fast-moving thunderstorm storm passed over our town Friday evening, bringing with it a tornado and this seriously big hail. The tornado was an F-1, which is not very big, but it did damage some businesses, the town’s water treatment facility, and some homes.

Also fortunately, the hail did not last too long. My car has some dimples from the hail, but our skylights were not damaged.

Once the storm had passed, we ventured outside and picked up some of the huge hail. By that time the power had gone off, and Richard said he wasn’t opening the freezer to save the hail for posterity. And I didn’t think to take a picture, the one above is a picture someone from town took and sent to the TV news station 

It is always an interesting experience to be without power for a while, because we are so conditioned to depend on electricity for our entertainment. So we sat in our very quiet house with the lanterns on. We actually sat in the living room together and talked for a while. Our boy went to bed early. I read a couple of chapters from the Terry Pratchett book to Richard that we started a few weeks ago. It was such a quiet, pleasant evening. Did the world come to an end because I missed Dog Whisperer? No, it did not. I am thinking that perhaps we need to have more TV-free evenings. Just turn the TV off, for cryin’ out loud!