Hail, Hail, The Plants Were Here...

Well, it seems that the clouds saw fit to start their own “bombing” campaign on St. Louis today, with not one, but two, separate hail storms today. The first one was rather typical for this time of year — just pea sized or smaller pieces of ice. However the second round (pun not intended) was much larger, some of the hail being larger than a penny in size.

What a mess! The second storm pulverized the flowering trees breaking off branches and leaving dozens of just opening dogwood flowers on the ground under the piles of ice. The Zuni Crabapple was also hit hard with hundreds of little pink buds lacing the sidewalk… what a shame, it would have been a spectacular showing on that tree this year.

Trees were not the only thing left damaged either. The guttering on my western wall has a new indentation going in about an inch from its original (flat) position and the neighbor's dingyless van is dingyless no more (my neighbor, who works at Ford, had just repaired the van from last year's hail damage). Fun.

Anyway, the oddest thing of all was how it came and went. During the whole ordeal, the sky was partially blue and we only got a short spell of rain right before the first batch of hail, so it was a rather interesting weather pattern to say the least. The Zuni still has some buds, so I'm hoping an encore presentation doesn't do those in too.

I wonder if anyone else in the region got hit by this storm?