Holy Hail Storm Batman.

I have been through hail. I almost was killed by hail in 2002, as I have mentioned. I, however, have NEVER seen what I saw tonight.

There was a humongous band of storms marching from west to east across North Texas tonight. I started watching the news around 6ish, saw tornados directly over where my parents live, freaked out just slightly, but I returned to normal when my mom called and said not only did they only get lots of rain, the worst of the storm was headed directly east, which would mean it would miss my house by a few miles. Lindsey rejoiced.

I continued watching news coverage, interspersed with snippets of Scrubs (I missed The Office because of this storm, dangit) for the rest of the evening. I noticed that the band of storms had grown toward the south, and a particularly scary shade of red was bearing down on Mansfield, my neck of the woods. The weatherman said it was no big deal, just rain and maybe some pea-sized hail. Nothing to worry about.

I've heard somewhere that meteorologists have the best job since they can be wrong all the time and still get a paycheck.

It started about 9 pm. All was quiet...and then came the rain. It came out of nowhere, and all of a sudden there were sheets of water falling from the sky. The wind was blowing so hard that it was raining sideways, literally. Thank goodness that I live on the northeast corner of my building and the storm came in from the west. I was sheltered, for the most part. I sat on my balcony for a few minutes to watch the rain. The outside lights on my apt. buildings blew, so it was a little strange to watch in the dark. I felt ok about it though, cause my apt. was right there, lights glowing cheerfully. I went back inside to call my mother and tell her all was well on my side of the world. And that's when I realized that the sheeting rain was just a preview of what was to come.

I was on the phone with my mother when it started hailing. And hailing. And hailing some more. I live on the top floor of my building, and I really seriously thought that the roof was going to cave it at one point. It was so loud that I couldn't hear my mother talking to me on the phone. I considered heading toward my closet, the innermost point in my house (although, being on the top floor, would it really make a difference if I tried to hide?) but I was too fascinated by the extreme amount of hail being currently dumped on my corner of the metroplex. I said goodbye to my mom and spent the rest of the storm at my balcony door, peeking through a crack at the world gone mad. After about five minutes it subsided, and I risked a trip actually out onto my balcony. I couldn't believe my eyes. There was hail EVERYWHERE. It looked as if it had snowed. It was pea-sized, all right. The meteorologist just failed to mention that the pea-sized hail would amass together to form giant ice floes 3 inches deep that are dangerous to walk on, let alone drive through. Good call, David Finfrock. Good call.

I went down, took the below-seen pictures, then retired back up to my balcony and watched everyone else crawl out of their rabbit-holes to marvel at this phenomenon. I actually just got finished watching two girls and three knight-in-shining-armor guys SHOVEL one of the girl's cars out of the HAIL she had gotten herself stuck in. Welcome to spring time in North Texas.




The view of the carport outside my building minutes after the storm. Thank goodness I had the foresight to park my car underneath. It might have been 6 pm and sunny at the time, but I went with my gut.



Giant hail ice floes. Ironically, the same one that said girl gets stuck in about 10 minutes after I take the pic. Hee.