Hail Yeah!

“Artistic food” was the theme for tonight’s Camp Fire potluck. Since my spouse had to take my oldest to soccer practice, I had to come home early today to make the “bagel faces.” (These are bagels with cream cheese and strategically placed vegetables: yellow pepper, mini-tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, carrot slices, etc.) As I walked from my car to the front door, I started to get pelted by itty bitty hail. By the time I got upstairs, it was coming down in fierce, 1/4″ chunks. A thunderstorm (yes, a thunderstorm) was passing through.

Even though it lasted a mere 20 minutes, there was enough accumulation of little, icy ball bearings to make things slippery. An hour later, on the way to Camp Fire, another cell treated us to a hailpour, which made navigating through the newest traffic circle rather interesting. (Why don’t people use their turn signals?)

Growing up in southeast Texas, I had my share of hurricane warnings. Each time, there was an adrenaline rush as I’d go into defense of the homestead mode. Spurred on by the fear oozing from the weather/news reports, I’d stock up everything from camping fuel to bottled water. There was always a sense of let down when the storm was demoted to a tropical annoyance or the system veered somewhere else.
I think this stems from experiencing hurricane Alicia back in 1983: it was really windy, all the pine trees fell down (thankfully, not on the house) and power was out three days. We weren’t well-prepared for that storm, and I hoped to do better next time.

Is this weird? (For the record, I don’t miss the flying cockroaches or fire ants.)

It started accumulating very quickly on the gutters.

In a few minutes,

Then the street was blotted out.