HAIL

Saturday afternoon we had the worst hail storm I  have ever been in. It was as if someone was dumping buckets of quarter sized hail down on top of our house mixed with pouring rain. All that white you see floating on the water is hail. I told the girls to stay away from the windows, but I stood at the back door and took these pictures. The noise and fury was deafening, and I wish I had gotten some video. 

The water is several inches thick swirling past the back step and full of hail. We got over 2 inches of rain in a few minutes. The rain gauge filled up at that point and I have no idea how much rain we got that day, as it rained two more times pouring down - probably 4 inches of rain in one day.

This is how thick the hail was in the yard. Its about quarter sized and full of shredded leaves.

Shredded pomegranate flowers and leaves.

More shredded leaves.

The garden was flooded, and the spinach and lettuce plants were completely smashed. I think the spinach might recover, maybe I should just cut what's left and freeze it even though it is completely full of grass and dirt and will be hard to clean, but the lettuce is already full of handfuls of pill bugs ( I hate pill bugs! Uggg, can you picture handfuls and handfuls of them huddling under the smashed lettuce? I swear they are giant!) The carrots look OK. The onions have a lot of torn leaves, but will probably recover. Ditto for the broccoli. The tomatoes have torn off leaves, and the few fruits that have already set have holes smashed in them, but the plants I think will be OK. All my beans, squash, and cucumbers had sprouted just the day before, but so far they look OK! A few baby peaches were knocked off the peach tree - well I have to thin them eventually! The tree bark looks a little worse for wear, so I hope the tree will be OK.

I am thankful that it wasn't any worse and that things will recover. Fully opened Irises were shredded, but new ones have already bloomed today from unhurt buds!

Hey, the rain-barrels are full!    ; )