It wasn’t exactly sunny yesterday afternoon when I went for a walk. But it was a nice break in the misty rain on a day when I’d been mostly at my desk. So. It happens that I looked at the rain gauge as I left and it had half an inch. Remember that number. Point five inches.
A bit down my road I saw Neighbor Doug at his barn making chainsaw art and I headed down the little hill to watch and kibitz. From that moment to when both of us were running for dear life was less than two minutes. Running because of wild thunder and lightening right over our heads and vicious hail coming down in buckets. Think Tropical storm, except with hail. Also cold.
We huddled inside Doug and Diane’s house looking at each other and listening, all of us, to the wild storm batter the metal roof. Thunder was virtually non-stop and there was hardly a second between noise and flash. Not a good thing. Doug unplugged all his electronics. The lights flickered. The picture here I took within minutes of the beginning. Three inches of ice hail on the ground. All of us, and the people I saw in town today, were stunned with the ferocity. My neighbors are good people and good friends. They do not hold with this Climate Change thing, but… This storm was not normal.
In a break, and to Doug’s verbal dismay, I walked back home. Figured the lightening would choose the trees, which are taller, and besides I was anxious enough about the house not to care. It was a foolish thing to do, which Doug made clear.
After Action: Doug says seven, seven!, inches of rain fell in that hour or two. My gauge overflowed at five inches. Neither of us have ever seen a storm like that here. Lightening through the phone line murdered the DSL modem and I had to replace it today. It also seems to have reached a computer monitor of mine which is dead but the Mac it was attached to is fine so I don’t understand. There were a few leaks in the roof, but with wind like that I am not surprised. And my road’s a mess, most of the sand and small gravel washed away. I worked on that today.
While the sun shined.
Tom DeVries 