Hail of a Thing

"HAIL!" shouted Lillian, charging through the house to the front door. "IT'S HAILING!!!"

I dropped the meat fork I was messing with and scurried after her. We stepped out onto the front porch to see hail bouncing along the sidewalk to the tune of thunder peals. "Look how big they are!" She cried in high glee. "I'm going to get some!"

We don't often see hail here; we can go years at a time without thunderstorms, and few of them have hail in them. This was a doozy, however -- those hailstones were bigger than fat peas, and they were coming down hard. When they began pinging off us and the front of the house, we retreated, and simply ran from window to window, laughing and marveling at the miracle of ice flying down out of the sky.

The weather service had forecast a possible thundershower for Friday afternoon, and they got it right in that regard. It did rain, and it did thunder, but they neglected to point out that it would come down so hard that in a matter of minutes, we had two inches of water standing on the back patio, and a veritable river streaming down the south side of the house, and piles of hailstones four inches deep against the fence.

Lil ran outside to glory in the elements for about five seconds -- hailstones hurt when they hit. And the temperature had dropped from a balmy 68 degrees to 48 in about ten minutes.

The little chair is on the front porch, which was sheltered, mostly. By that point, the hail and downpour had stopped, and I had returned to the kitchen and the pot roast I had been browning (it was a little dark, but not burnt), glad of the heat from the stove.

Bernie and I went for a walk later, just to peer at the piles of hail still melting in peoples' gardens and lawns. The air was scrubbed about as clean as it ever gets here in the Central Valley; in addition, if there were any leaves waiting to drop in this area, they were now done.

The geraniums in the background took a bit of a beating, and we lost some tiny oranges that had just set, but the blueberries, the tomato blossoms, and the cherry tree were fine.

The only thing I should have done was shovel up some of that hail and put it in the freezer, so that I can look at it on Wednesday, when the temps are supposed to soar into the 90s.

This is not the way a morning in early September is supposed to look in the Central Valley.

Nevertheless, it was highly entertaining to awaken to thunder and a cloud-clotted sky yesterday morning. Howie and I scrambled from the tent, and I shouted for Bernie (who had been up a bit earlier than I) to pull the cover over the mesh roof.

After donning sweaters, we retired with coffee and tea to the garage studio, door open, to watch the lightning and clouds drift across the sky until just before lunchtime.

There was more rain than I thought there would be, but not so much as to endanger local crops. And it was truly a comedy that while rain poured down, and thunder boomed, that the weather service online claimed we had clear skies.

Eyeballs can be good tools when ascertaining the current weather conditions.

Eclipse and Storm

Not being particularly astronomical in nature, I didn't make it a point to note the time of the solar eclipse the other day. In the back of my mind, I suppose, I figured I'd know it if I saw it.

The evening of said eclipse, we were watching TV (the ever-engrossing Food Channel) when I noticed that the light outside had gone a bit odd. I grabbed a piece of cardstock from the studio, punched a hole in it with a pencil, and ran outside. My pinhole was really ragged, so I punched another (that's why there are two images in the shadow.)

Having been followed outside by most of the rest of the family, I was able to take advantage of Lillian's wits, as she recommended I use the garage door as my "screen." There it was, the eclipse, imaged.

Our neighbors across the street, who were also viewing the eclipse, ran over with some amazing filtered "glasses" with which one could look directly at the sun and see the eclipse. They have been cleverly spending time at our local branch library, where the librarians were giving out these paper-and-plastic eyeglasses for free. It was truly amazing technology, and I wish everyone had access to it.

And then, yesterday, which was the date of my father's birthday, just two weeks before my own, we had a thunderstorm with about 40 minutes of pouring rain. This may not seem like much, but we can go for years here in the Central Valley without seeing a thunderstorm, and certainly any rain at all after March and before November is unusual.

Bernie and I sat in the garage with the door open and watched the weather come through, the ominous dark clouds, the dancing rain, listening to the peals of thunder.

The very first instance in my life that I began to lose my fear of thunderstorms, my dad was standing out on the front porch, watching the lightning and the rain. I hovered at the front door, wanting to be with him, in terror of the loudness of the thunder. My love and belief in him won out, and I crept to his side, seeing how he reveled in the power of the storm.

From then on, I was a storm fanatic, and have loved them so much that a mere peal of thunder during the day draws me to a window to watch the wonder, dropping everything else, and at night, sends me into a deep and peaceful sleep.

So hey, Dad, happy birthday, and though it was two weeks in advance, I'll accept that storm as being my birthday gift, too, and nothing pleases me more.