Just for the hail of it

We had a pretty nasty hail storm last (Monday) night. Fred and I were getting ready for bed when all of a sudden it sounded like millions of ginormous cannibalistic toads (à la Stephen King's Rainy Season) were pelting our rooftop. Here are some pics of the hail that I bravely (read stupidly) darted out into the storm to get. I put a quarter beside the hail stone so you have some frame of reference.

I was pretty impressed with the size of this one until...

About 5 minutes later when hail the size of this one started to fall

A neighbour was telling us today that a friend of his had to go move the car to covered parking when the hail started to fall, so he put on his wife's bike helmet. I am so totally doing that the next time it hails.

It's a Twister Auntie Em!

North Texas may be a boring place to live, but the weather can sure make things interesting in a heart beat. All day the weather people here have been seemingly on the brink of orgasm about the weather that was supposed to materialize tonight. I've learned to take these reports with a grain of salt; quite a few of these people get their knickers in a knot about nothing.

But as I watched the line of storms approach tonight, I thought, "this could be interesting". And suddenly out of nowhere, the tornado sirens sounded. And the weather guy was all a-quiver about possible rotation around the area we live in. Then our house was being pelted by rain, and the winds picked up shaking the whole house. And our power went out. At that point I might have peed my pants a little.

Thankfully it was over as quickly as it blew up. Our power came back on only minutes after it went out, and Elise slept through the whole thing.

I think I enjoyed this kind of stuff more before I had a kid and owned property. You know, grown-up stuff.