What the Hail?

Spent some unexpected quality time with the family tonight in my basement. Just an ending to a Sunday that saw quite the mixed bag of weather!

Was super sunny and warm this morning and early afternoon. Today was the Royal Event -- Assumption School's annual big fundraiser and entertainment day. The three of us joined a whole bunch of friends in the 3-mile walk to raise money for a scholarship fund we support. It was actually warm enough to sweat. Thankfully there was a nice breeze. And it was especially pretty along the Wisconsin River where the pink Hopa trees are in bloom.

Fast forward to 2 hours later. We are still at the school enjoying good food, good ice cream (that's in its own category), fun games and nice company. The sun has all but disappeared now. And the clouds are getting pretty dark. We decided to head home by 3 and got home just in time for the first major lightning and rain storm.

The sun came out a short time later and I made sure I got my running around done (grocery shopping, etc.) because we knew another line of storms was headed our way by supper time. Of course, as things tend to go, I have pork chops in the oven and they are set to get done in about 16 minutes when we hear the Tornado Warning for a storm that should hit us in 20 minutes. Should I just shut it off or do we grab it when it's done and bolt for the basement?

We chose plan B. There's something a little disconcerting about eating on TV trays in the basement, watching the radar on TV and seeing the storm get closer and closer, while hearing rain and hail pounding outside. Let me tell you, pork chops and corn are not my idea of the "last supper." Good thing we survived.

We know from early reports and hearing the many sirens that emergency personnel are dealing with something somewhere relatively close. But this is the extent of our "hit"...
A whole lotta hail! Nothing damaged or broken anywhere that we can tell.

Some of it was pretty big stuff! I would say mostly pea-sized but some bigger ones like this one...

And the bigger than eyeball-sized one...

And this almost golf ball-sized one that melted pretty fast while Carter was finding a golf ball for comparison.

We also got a small lake in our driveway. This has only happened when there's been a ton of snow melting in spring. Never like this from a rain storm!

Had some branches down in back. This one actually was driven right into the ground by the wind and was sticking up on its own.

This one was, too! Tells you there was some wicked winds blowing out there, too!

These 2 big branches were about it for tree damage. So not major at all on Blue Jay Drive anyway.

We're feeling lucky. And hope God kept everyone else in the storm's path out of harm's way as well!