Oh Hail

The rich man has his ice in the summer and the poor man gets his in the winter. Well, I guess we should be feeling kinda rich right now...

The view to the west with the storm moving in from the south

At 6:30 last night, the warning sirens went off. We spent the next 45 minutes in the basement with The Boy playing his DS, Mr. LH watching the storm on his iPad and me reading a Nancy Drew book aloud to The Girl.

By 10:30pm, all the warnings and watches had expired for us (or so we thought) and the remaining storms were tracking away from us. But by 11PM, Mr. LH and I were awakened by hail pounding on the roof and skylights. I thought the sound of acorns falling on a roof was bad but the hail was coming down so fast and so hard, we had to shout to hear each other speaking!

The front yard under the canopy of the cherry tree - lots of unripened cherries came off in the storm.

I had managed to pull my hydrangeas under the front porch for protection (the front yard was out of the wind, too), but my veggie plants were left out on the patio to ride out the storm. I kept my face pressed to the patio doors trying to see how my veggie plants were doing but I couldn't see anything through the sheets of rain.

We had hailstones from pea-sized to marble sized and so thick on the back patio that you could scoop it like snow.

As soon as the storm passed, I went outside to see the damage (there was no way I was going to sleep otherwise).  I could tell it wasn't good, but I had to wait until morning to take full stock of the situation.

The cucumber plants. I'm hoping they survive.

The pole beans. I think these will make it, though the leaves are pretty battered.

I lost one jalapeno plant and a couple of tomato plants.  The cilantro was pretty beaten down too, but I'm pretty sure everything else will survive. As it turns out, we had been right smack in the center of the storm, so we were lucky to only get the small hail and NO TORNADOES. Other areas had hail the size of golf balls.

One half-melted hailstone on a cucumber leaf that was torn from the main plant

We even saved some for the "Pickles" to see in the morning.  Thankfully, they were sleeping in the basement and didn't wake at all through the whole ordeal.

On a side note, I have to mention that whenever someone mentioned Colorado to me, I thought of mountains and snow and skiing....hiking, kayaking and mountain climbing. Certainly not a flat, treeless expanses of land. And I never thought of Colorado as having tornadoes. Kansas, certainly, but not Colorado. But I also never really thought before of Colorado having such a vast prairie...or of Kansas (along with a chunk of the rest of tornado alley) being RIGHT NEXT DOOR.  Now I know better.

That being said...for those who are interested, the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office website has charts and maps showing the distribution of Colorado tornadoes since 1950. Interesting stuff.