Storm

Last night we had a wild and crazy storm! It was the hail that woke me up... definitely marble sized, and some looked a half inch or more in diameter! (I didn't venture out to measure... I'm not that crazy!) The wind was intense, and whipped the hail against the windows. I was sure the glass would break, but it didn't. The rain was so heavy, it was like the house was going through a car wash. Oh, and there was lightning too, but you couldn't hear the thunder over the rain and hail. Dad has a rain gauge, and he said we got an inch / 25 mm during the 15 minutes or so that it rained.

About half way through the storm we lost power, and didn't get it back until just before 5 am. (The storm started at 1:30 am.) I heard it come on because I was sleeping in the living room again, and mom's printer makes noise when it comes on. All the lights from the clocks, etc, plus the electronic photo frame probably helped wake me up too. (The photo frame automatically turns on if there's been a power outage... silly thing!) The printer kept talking to itself for a while, so I retreated back down to the basement, which was finally cool enough to sleep in.

Between being awakened by the storm, and then again by the power coming on, I was a bit reluctant to get up this morning. (I also have a headache that isn't sure if it's there or not. Occasionally it flashes some pain, and then goes away again.)

On my way to the bus I surveyed the damage. It looks like we won't have tomatoes this year:

The current ones are damaged badly enough that they'll probably rot on the vine if we leave them, and the itty bitty ones won't be ripe before the frost comes. (I didn't check all the tomatoes, but I assume they were also hit.) I'll probably remove all the damaged ones in the hopes of speeding up the babies. (For some reason, we seem to have big tomatoes and itty bitty tomatoes, with very little in between.)

The ground was littered with shredded leaves:

even though the nearest trees of that type were quite far away:


Thankfully this isn't my fence!

(You'll probably have to click through to the big version to spot the tall fence flat on the ground.)

Dad took this photo on his street:


After the storm passed there were lots of sirens - the next one would start *before* the previous one passed out of hearing! They weren't all in the same place, though... where we're situated, we can hear them from several major streets. I could still hear a large number of sirens this morning when I got up.