If ya don't like the weather - wait a minute ;-)

A NOTE- I have been trying to post this since last June 25.... Something prevented me from being able to post.... I am going to try now for the 8th time and see what happens. Yes it will be an old Blog BUT I am determined to get this thing working. So, if it works, here it is... If it doesn't - dang it - I will keep trying ;-)

PS - I am writing about Hail and today it is close to a hundred .. Now that is late!!!!

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If ya don't like the weather in Texas - you just wait a minute ... or that's how the old Texas saying goes... Well I have news for you - It's the same in South Dakota.

This last Friday (June 24) started off kinda normal with the weather but steadily got hot as the day wore on. Some friends of ours (along in years) was having a garage sale just down the road from our apartment building. I checked on them about 11am. They were already too hot to be out there even with their ice tea and shade. I told them I would come back about 4pm and help them put their stuff up. Well, the heat got to them AND ME so they packed it in about 3pm. This turned out to be a very good decision.

I told them I would help them in the morning get setup again for Saturday's sale.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Menacing clouds started rolling in ... and rolling in ... and getting DARKER. I had checked on a neighbor in the apartment building next to ours. I decided I had best head for home `cause the sky was about to do some bad things... and it did.

First there was a small shower and then the hail came. It caught me within 30 feet of the door to my apartment. The pieces of ice were huge; some the size of golf balls. I had my hand over my head when one hit me on my middle knuckle of my right hand. Hurt like HAIL.......

A second `boulder' of ice struck me on the right shoulder near my neck... Also hurt!!!!!!! There was a constant pelleting of marble size hail. I had never seen hail falling like this stuff was doing. I think the one that struck me on the neck was the size of a grey-hound bus.... well, it felt like it to me..

I got inside and it took only minutes to completely cover the ground with the falling ice pellets.


Here is a picture of a car being pelted but the picture doesn't do the hail justice. The balls of ice started melting as fast as it hit the ground. By the time I thought of a camera... most was already melted. At one point, you could not see the ground, roadway, or sidewalks.

We had lots of windshields broken and dimples on the hoods and tops of our neighbor's cars but ours escaped damage. The only damage Molly and I had was mostly to my little garden. Tomatoes, pepper plants and cabbages will have to be replanted.... The planted area closer to the building was okay.

All this happened in a matter of minutes while we were sun-burning just hours before.

Like I said, the pictures do not do justice as to what happened... There were thousands of 1 1/2" hail but I also saw dozens that were as big a golf balls. But all in all we did better than those five miles away from us. They reported hail three inches across. Ours was tiny besides theirs.



Then we get the National Weather Service warning - the weather channel had put us under another alert for a second wave of the same about 45 minutes. They advised for folks to take shelter in the middle of your home or building.... Dumb us! We went outside and set in our lawn chairs to watch it come in and then we were going to run for cover. We enjoyed a nice afternoon; sipping tea. NOTHING HAPPENED... Yep, the weather changed it's mind.

Our little experience was like that old saying down in Texas where I came from ... but South Dakota got a good dose of what that old saying says.. If ya don't like the weather - just wait a minute.... It worked for us ;-)

But ya know, I would rather have this hail storm than the heat and fires my Texas friends write to me about.

Got to run for now ... I have some garden plants to replace.

My best as always
jay

PS and yes my swollen finger still hurts but not as much as my neck and shoulder (but then, I have always been a crybaby).

PSS Just imagine how I would complain if we were getting the tornadoes or the fires or the `lack of rain' as many of the states around the U.S.A. are dealing with. Those are the folks who have it bad... Think of them in your prayers.