Nature's Cause and Effect

This morning I was sipping the first mouthful of coffee when I noticed a rumble. I looked outside and there was an ominous looking cloud front just crawling over the horizon. It seemed alive.
It got so black that my camera's flash went off.
These are not black and white images. For the next three hours, the rain, thunder, and lightening came and went, not allowing me to get the goats out, and resigning me to decide that they were just getting hay in the barn today. Then as I finally set my sights on getting drenched, the rain subsided.
Which reminded me of another day the sky turned black. Remember this? These are from March 23, 2011, the day of the hail storm in this area.

One by one, the roofs in this town are getting replaced because of the damage the hail left. For some its the siding also. Cars have been repaired also. If you just go and see the dents in the yard here, you can understand. Even our new roof on the garage addition has damage. We had the assessor and a roof company inspecting all at once and there was no disagreement on the need for a new roof. But the real shocker was this. The barn also is full of dents. We wouldn't have even thought about it, but up they went and took their photos.

And I consider us lucky. We weren't displaced by the storm at all. Makes me think of the folks without power and cut off due to Irene. We've been in those shoes, and its one thing to not be able to turn on your lights, but its a whole other thing when your home is damaged or destroyed.

Good luck to all those people out there waiting for things to return to a livable normal.