Hailstorm. . .

Apparently Noah better start building an ark here in England. . .this "summer"  has been more than a little wet!  While it has been 107 degrees back home, it's been consistently in the mid-60s here and we are wearing jeans, sweatshirts, jackets. . .I actually had the fireplace going last night because I didn't want coffee and couldn't get warm!  Ugh!

I'm a little behind the times, but we had a wild hailstorm--the local paper called it "weather of biblical proportions"--come through on June 28th.  It was during the day and just me at home. . .the hailstones were huge. . lots of damage especially on our side of town. . .broken windows & roof tiles, dented cars & broken windscreens, conservatories with collapsed roofs.  Many local businesses lost stock due to flash floods & there were reports of birds falling out of the sky.  It was so loud in my conservatory that it hurt a little to be out there during the 10-15 minutes the storm lasted.  The house we live in was pretty much okay. . our van is dented in numerous spots. . .

During the storm, the wildest thing was watching these hailstones bounce 10 feet up into the air off the road, my yard, the car. . .

I took some videos during the storm; here is Keith's Facebook post about them:

We had an interesting day on Wednesday. We had hail and severe thunderstorms. In the office it felt like a regular Illinois thunderstorm, but that's quite rare here and due to the fact that we are further north, meant that in June we got hail. Power struck a transformer outside the office, and we lost power which meant I had to work until 1 am on Thursday. I'm a little embarrassed because at home Missy saw much worse. Here's some videos:

This is the first one, watch the yard (garden) and see these things bounce:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijojOlKu6xw

This one gets better, watch em bounce. I've been told this is the worst storm in 70 years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CiESbGFbJI

Watch them bounce off the patio table on the right hand side of the video, another interesting contrast is the black driveway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCt14Z67MpE

The car alarm isn't on at the beginning. The top of the car has got dents every 6-10 inches:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBLbTydtNTo

All in all quite a bit of wild weather in England.

And here is how the garden, etc looked once I could get out there and snap some pictures:

broken tile in our patio table

 I left Charlotte's window open so she had a few hailstones that I discovered a little later. . .

I saved some of the hailstones to show Keith and the girls. . .it's been a long time--if ever--that I have seen hail stones that big!!  There were pictures of some that topped four inches in diameter!

On the way to pick up the girls from school.

I wouldn't want it to storm like that all the time (there was even a very rare tornado locally), but it was really a tremendous thing to witness!!