Second Wave

Lightning may not strike in the same spot twice, but hail certainly does!  Just a few hours after I posted my last photos we got another storm.  This time I wasn't home.  Emily and I were getting a flat tire repaired.  Apparently we ran over a nail amid all the storm debris.

Heather and Megan were on their way home from the school bus.  Since my vehicle was out of commission they had to walk.  They had just arrived home and were on the front portch when the second storm hit.  By the time they got the front door open they were both wet and had been pelted with hailstones.  Crazy weather!

I wish now that I had picked ALL the watermelons earlier today.  I just wanted Heather to have a chance to pick one of her home-grown watermelons.  That isn't meant to be, I guess.

Here's what's left of Heather's watermelon plants.  This is where the three I posted earlier were.

This is the little watermelon that was still intact earlier.  Pieces of hail blasted chunks out of the side of it.

We also found this little guy that was demolished.  I didn't even know he was there, even after the earlier storm.  He was hidden among the plants.

The big watermelon that survived the earlier storm was destroyed in the second storm, as well.  It was filled with mud and other undesirable objects so we had to throw it away.

 It had 4 points of impact with the hailstones.  This spot is bigger than my thumb print.

I got home about 30 minutes after the storm and took photos.  Keep in mind that these hailstones had already started melting before the photos were taken.



Blurry, but by far the biggest one I saw.



My back fence was shredded.  It is just a chain link fence with metal slats, so the hail did a real number on the metal slats. 

After dark, I went out to the alley to throw away some trash and realized the whole fence in leaning into the alley.  The slats look way worse from that side, but it was too dark to take pictures.

Friends and neighbors report broken windows in cars and houses, roofs that were ripped off in places, and many families are without power.  As Emily and I drove home earlier we saw trees that had been uprooted or had branches ripped off.  Some landed in the street or on cars.  Power poles fell into traffic.  Water flooded yards and homes. 

We were truly blessed if the worst we got was a mangled fence!