About 4:30pm yesterday my phone buzzed an alert that a storm was coming with damaging hail. I didn't think much of it, we have severe thunderstorms all the time and they all come with possible hail alerts. I was more concerned that honey was going to be on the road when it hit. Half hour later, another alert. I still thought it was just going to be an ordinary storm. He made it here just as the rain started. The sky wasn't dark, the wind wasn't blowing. But then the hail started. Pea-sized at first, for about 5 minutes, and then tapered off. More rain, and then it got real noisy. And the hail was back, bigger than before. Hailstones the size of ping-pong and golf balls came pouring down. And it lasted for at least 10 minutes. It was pretty awful.

My pepper plants are completely stripped of leaves. The cannas and hostas are full of holes. The tree in the front yard has branches stripped of leaves. And the street is completely covered by a blanket of leaves stripped from the trees.

Three hours after the storm, there was still ice on the ground. I cleared it away from the plants that remained, because I didn't think it would be good for them to be sitting in ice.

Honey's work vehicle has dents. Our house roof obviously took a beating, but I checked the insurance and it's a scheduled roof replacement, so at approximately 20 yrs old, we'd not going to get much insurance money to replace it. A contractor was already around by 7pm doing roof inspections, so we had him do ours (that was before I knew about the insurance) and as we spoke, two more contractors drove by. I have put up No Solicitor signs on the doors, because it will be a busy week of annoying doorbell ringing from these guys.

And the predators gathered in the parking lot at the grocery this morning.