Hail

Okay … it’s a tennis ball in the picture … have you ever wondered what causes hail?

Hail the size of golf balls! Our little town made the statewide news. Video footage courtesy one of our locals.

I missed it, of course. I was swimming in the city when the storm came through. Apparently our dog went bananas at the noise. (We have a tin roof.) The few people outside, trying to cover their cars or just caught out by the abruptness of the downpour, scurried for shelter before they got too bruised by the huge hail missiles.

The storm cell had black clouds from horizon to horizon: everything was black. No silver linings in these enormous clouds! At the pool the rain dropped like bullets, a wall of water all around the building; then the power went off and we all had to get out. Thank goodness for the emergency lighting and the back-up generators! Such sensible building codes …

The storm at home was equally sudden and even more ferocious. Nature at her wildest. I imagine a god up there with a chess board, idly moving pieces around: who shall we frighten today? Or maybe it’s pure and simple climate change and the nature spirits have nothing to do with it. Either way, we’ve had some wild weather lately: floods last October which cut our town off and isolated us, and now this humongous hail. I am in awe of Mother Nature: she’s certainly a force to be reckoned with!

In no way am I saying that we’ve done it tough here: we haven’t lost houses or cars or belongings like the devastating floods (plural, because they’ve happened multiple times in the same places over the last year) in the Northern Rivers and the Riverina. Our house is still standing, and habitable, and we are not facing clean-up after demoralising clean-up, only to have more waves of water come through and destroy what’s been salvaged all over again – before properties can be assessed for insurance purposes … I cannot imagine the mental and emotional toll of such destruction, the loss of hope and possessions and livelihoods … My heart goes out to the people affected!