Friday afternoon was a little intense. One of S’s med school friends was in town and he stopped by with his girlfriend, who is originally from Nebraska. They were preparing to leave around 5:00 and as we opened the door to let them out, pea-sized hail starts falling. They decided to wait out the hail, so we went back inside and continued to talk. A couple minutes later, I thought I heard something and shushed everyone. Sure enough, the tornado sirens were going off. Astute readers may recall that as I learned in our first week in Indiana two years ago, sometimes they turn the sirens on here even if there’s no hint of a tornado. So I flipped the TV on and sure enough, there’s a tornado warning for our county. The four Indiana natives (plus one baby) head for the basement. The Nebraskan and the Kansan (that would be me) rush to the windows to start looking for funnel clouds. Maybe I am a nerd.
It was raining and blowing far too hard for a tornado to be in the neighborhood, so as soon as the hail passed, our guests left. We were still in a warning, and according to the weather people speaking breathlessly on TV, the offending storm was within a few miles of our house and headed right towards us. Terrific! I dig storms and all, but now that I own a house, I’d prefer if they avoided my neighborhood.
The whole tornado thing ended up being a dud. Nothing was ever spotted on the ground, and although the worst of the storm indeed went right through our neighborhood, there was never any need to head for cover. What we did get, however, was the most intense hail storm I’ve ever been in. I’ve been in some hail storms that dropped massive stones for 30 seconds, or a minute. Friday we got quarter-sized hail, non-stop, for between five and ten minutes. Along with it, massive, tropical-storm like rain fell straight down in sheets. At one point, we couldn’t see the houses next to ours it was raining so hard.
When the hail finally abated, the ground was completely covered with the stones. As I write this on Saturday night, there is still a pile of it outside my office window. Our deck had so much hail on it that not only could I not open the back door, but all the seams in the deck wood were sealed with it and the rain was just pooled on top of it. With all the bright green leaves floating in the mess, our deck looked like a particularly offensive mint julep.
We had another round of heavy rain and winds later in the evening, then Saturday the weather turned frigid. We had snow flurries throughout the day and even snow covering some surfaces Sunday morning. All after over a week of near-80 degree weather. As always, when it comes to weather, the midwest sucks.