“A day in the country is worth a month in town”Christina Rossetti

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Hailstorm Hits -Tornado Nearby

You know how life can get busy, and you never make it to the end of your list that day? Yesterday that was a good thing I think. Had I got going further down the road, I would have been in Greensburg, and it appears that is where the most damage was done by this funnel cloud and the weather with it. I read that 30 homes are destroyed and many more heavily damaged. I only made it to the grocery store in Latrobe, and as I was gathering my list and bags, someone started throwing bricks at my car. No. Not really, but that's what I really thought. The first few hail balls were huge and had a lot of snow around them. By the time I gathered my wits, and turned on my camera, they were coming down faster and a bit smaller.


I made it into the store and got my groceries and then when I wanted to leave, there was a crowd at the door. The sky was BLACK at 5:45pm. It doesn't get dark until 7:30pm these days. No one was moving in or out. Half an hour later, after dinner at the salad bar, I made a run for the car and drove home. Debris of all kind was all over the roads. I have never seen as much water ponding my neighborhood streets. It couldn't drain fast enough. My worry all the way home was the sheds, the goats, and the barn, but as you see, the barn is standing, with golf balls all over the corral. Or is it baseballs? Or are these eggs? Two hours after the storm had passed, the hail balls were still in my lawn. There were still many there at 8pm to show Dave after he arrived from the airport.
At about a 6:30pm arrival at Pittsburgh International, Dave said he saw something he had never seen before. Every flight on the screens was flashing Delayed.
In order to get off the plane, another one waiting to depart had to back out. Most gates had planes sharing an area as delays were causing all sorts of problems. He was lucky to arrive safely.You can see how the hail has an ice nucleus and then more layers around it.
All the sheds and goats were fine, although the two young bucklings would NOT come out of the new shed. Zola came back and forth trying to get them to follow. I finally had to hand carry them to the gate and we got them home.

I have to say a thank you to my kind neighbor Jeff, who drove his severely hailstorm dented car to the barn to make sure all was well in the fields. Apparently he had visions of me pummeled to death, trying to rescue the goats!! I can just imagine that is what the goat kids were dreaming of last night as they tried to sleep.

And today - sleet!

HAIL VIDEO FROM THE CAR - PART TWO

2 comments:

Lois Evensen said...

Good grief! I'm glad you and yours (including the goats!) are all OK. Great video.

Rose said...

I am glad that all was safe...wouldn't it be horrible to come home and find your house/garage/anything just destroyed? Poor little kids...I bet they were terrified.