Hail Storm

I suppose this could be considered old news, as it happened on Monday, but it was also big news for the boys at our house, so I'll post it anyway.

Even thought it is only March, we had our first round of tornado weather here in Omaha on Monday. Interestingly, on the same date in 1913, there was a huge tornado that ravaged parts of Omaha. People that live here in the Cornhusker state know that any type of weather can happen any time. Sometimes stressful, but I would take a tornado over an earthquake any day.

Monday afternoon about 4:30, the sky outside our deck door started to turn a sickly shade of green. My "mommy storm radar" went on full alert, and I sent the kids downstairs to play. I just had a feeling the sirens were going to go off at some point, and I thought this would make the kids easier to round up. I also started carting pairs of tennis shoes downstairs. My grandmother and mother have told me endless times not to go into the basement for a tornado without shoes for everyone, in case you have to walk back out over glass and rubble. I just can't hit the basement without shoes.

Sure enough, around 5:00 my weather radio was alarming and the sirens were blaring. 5 minutes later, despite being contained in a windowless basement room, we could hear hail absolutely POUNDING the house. The storm's funnel/wall cloud passed about 15 blocks south of our house, which explains the horrific winds we heard hurling hail at our siding. Once we were sure the storm had passed our area of the city, I ventured out to a window, and discovered so much hail in our yard it looked like it had snowed. Here is the view on our deck of a pile that collected near the baby gate:



I thought the fun was over, and the sky actually did start getting a bit sunny for about 15 minutes, but soon we were back to green, and this time we had rain, more hail, and 70 mile an hour winds. The wind picked up all of our lawn furniture at once, and hurled it over our 6 foot privacy fence into the neighbor's yard. Sammy, who was looking out the window with me, remarked, "Oh lookie! It can fly!"

This went on for about 10 minutes. When it finally stopped, I thought we were done yet again. Just like before, the sun came out a bit, but within 15 minutes the rain, wind, and hail were all back. More hail joining the previous pile:



Luckily for us, round three was it. I zipped outside between raindrops to gather some hailstones for the boys to explore and keep in the freezer.



Charlie was surprised to discover that ice cubes could fall from the sky.

It was an exciting afternoon, but not one that I want to repeat soon!!!!