Hail Storm

Last week the West Valley (that is, the western part of the Phoenix metropolitan area) was hit with two hail storms in one day. Though perhaps part of the same storm system, the two hail storms hit a few hours apart. The first storm, pictured above, dropped stones the size of small marbles. The second storm dropped much, much bigger stones.

These things were huge! The sounds of these hitting the house was deafening. The cats were very frightened. I saved a few in the freezer to show Erin when she got home.




The hail did crazy stuff outside. In addition to trashing our patio and flooding the lawn, it turned on a faucet and knocked the lug-nut cover off my truck. My poor truck took a beating. The hood has dozens of little dents, individual impact craters from the hail stones. I'm going to get a dent popper. Hope it works...



When the storm stopped a rainbow arched over the neighborhood. It turned into a modest double rainbow. One of the strangest things was how the hummingbirds continued to feed during the storm. Each hailstone must have outweighed the birds, but they would dart over to the feeder, drink, and dart off. Maybe they were playing chicken or nectar roulette.