hail storm

Just a couple days after Terry returned from his two-week mission trip, we had a huge hail storm. We had crazy thunderstorms all of June (including several seemingly never ending 2-4am lightning storms that woke us all up despite fans, and even hail in the middle of the night, which I've never seen). 

We had just sat down to dinner when it started raining and then normal-hailing. At that point the hail was just pea sized and though there was a lot, it wasn't like what would come. But then it let up and we sat back down to try to eat again (because we had been running from the front to the back taking pictures). Then the hail started up again but was coming down much faster. It was like a blizzard of hail. Evie and Ezra were freaking out. Both were crying, thinking the world was ending, and the rest of us thought it was so cool and were taking tons of pictures. At that point I wasn't thinking of my garden or my poor hydrangeas getting pummeled.

This shot was from the first go-round of hail.

We planted our first garden on Memorial Day and I was so proud how everything was actually growing. And then the hail came... End of garden. I replanted everything a few days later.

Our downspouts couldn't keep up. Look at that pile of hail! 

I thought the rain in the gutters, from the storm while Terry was gone was a lot (below)...

I was wrong. This is what the street looked like during the storm!

And after the storm. There was a river down both sides with hardly any road left in the middle, except for the hail shoals. Ha!

Looking down the street afterward.

We made Noah stand in the largest pile of hail on the back deck so we could see how deep it was.  

Like I said, most of the hail was just pea sized, but there were some marbles out there (nothing like Hills Alive two years ago though).

My poor beautiful hydrangeas got absolutely shredded. We had worked so hard to clear that area and plant them, and Terry was so nice to protect them during the Mother's Day blizzard. Well, we couldn't do anything for them this time without getting beaten and bruised. And what's worse is that I had just fertilized them right before the storm started. They had become duller and I was hoping to perk them up. Yeah, that didn't happen.

There was a beautiful double rainbow after the storm passed. I made the kids stand in another pile of hail to document it all. 

Our poor neighbor to the east gets a river through her yard with big storms like this. We'd seen it happen once before but this was worse. Our house is in the perfect place. We don't get standing water anywhere.

View from the upper level. 

It was pretty. 

I thought the sun on the hail, leaves and berries from the neighbor's beat-up tree was pretty. 

Very big cloud.

That evening was Wednesday and we had youth group at the Maze. At the intersection of Highway 16 and Catron Blvd I caught up with the storm an hour later. This was on top of a large hill so I got a good view, but too bad all I had was a cell phone.