“Holy cow! We’re getting baseball-sized hail here!”
This was the text message from my husband, working in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa.
“Yeah, right.” I thought to myself. That’s a little far-fetched.
But sure enough, he followed it up with a couple photos of guys holding the hail in their hands. Not far off.
The storm eventually made its way to where we are living near Pretoria (Gauteng Province) and although hailstorms are normal for this time of year, the hail was unusually large.
In the states, most of the times we’ve encountered hailstorms, we were also watching for a tornado. Here in this area of South Africa, we don’t worry about the tornadoes, but severe thunderstorms and lightning accompany these little car-busters.
I’m not going to go into the science of hail formation. You can either wikitardia that, or better yet, How Stuff Works.
The hail had reduced its size to golf balls by the time Kurt reached home, and we stood in the doorway as the balls pelted our tin roof and cannonballed themselves into our swimming pool, spraying large plumes of water as they submerged.
I’ll leave you with this nice little video my husband took at his worksite of the hail coming down.
Happy Friday, dear readers, whatever your weather!
Love, Marla
Strewth! Trust all is okay for you….
Scary, scary stuff Marla!
This particular storm didn’t make it to our part of Pretoria, but we stood watching in helpless awe in October last year when the East Rand was hit by a similar hailstorm, smashing straight through roof tiles, corrugated iron roofs and car windshields…
Holy Hail !! We had a nice hailstorm earlier this summer with some of them around an inch in size…thought those were plenty big enough! Sure hate to get whacked on the head with one of those you had there!! Hope your wheels were in the garage.
Wow I hope you escaped without much if any damage!!!