Unexpected Hailstorm

It hailed and rained like crazy for nearly half an hour, with lightning. It wasn't dark but it looked very dark. This photo is through an open door.



There's a little video here: Hailstorm
I took it out the back door without going out and getting pounded. In the middle is "Marty's hole" for those of you who are familiar with it. It's four feet across and three feet deep and doesn't show one bit—flat ground, it appears. Then there's hail on top of the hot tub. Bummer I didn't get lightning or thunder.

This was in the daytime, an hour or more before sundown. Notice the daylight above the house, over the hot tub. That was a heck of a dark cloud.

Note the next day: It's early afternon and there's still hail in a big plastic bucket I collected some in, about 14" deep. I wanted rainwater to water airplane plants, and after 18 hours there's still hail in the bucket. This morning there was a layer all across the top. Now there are a few clumps about palm-sized. That hail was very cold and very solid, not the wimpy poofy-hail we're used to. The hailstones were between a quarter and half an inch, but loud. When I first heard it, I didn't think rain or hail, I thought something was banging on the house, or had hit the house. In retrospect and having seen the reports, we had a wind of maybe 50 mph STRAIGHT from the north and the hailstones were hitting all our front windows and the door straight on as soon as the wind arrived. Sounded like a barrage of gravel that didn't quit.

We had 21/8 inches of rain. Our regular rain measuring buckets had blown over, but I did find two things that had stayed upright, and one had straight sides. Yikes! A store very near us had part of the roof cave in and someone was trapped but she's not badly hurt. All precipitation stopped after about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, and it moved on south at its rapid rate.