Stones and Rainbows

Oh my gosh ya'll. We got the most awesome storm here last night. I have never, never seen anything like it. It has been kinda rainy here the last several days but I had thought that by yesterday afternoon things were supposed to start clearing up and then it would be clear through this weekend. When I left work last night while walking out to the parking garage I overheard some people commenting that 'it' was on 'its' way. They were pointing toward the darkened sky. About half-way through my thirty minute commute I heard a severe thunderstorm warning for several counties about an hour northwest of us. The warning had moved to our county and added a tornado warning by the time I got home. I spent five minutes picking up the lawn tools and toys in the backyard. Don-e called only minutes after I got back inside to tell me to move our car, which we normally parked outside, down the street to his parents house under their carport because golf ball sized hail would be in our area in twenty minutes. I grabbed Elijah and we moved the car down the street but instead of waiting there for Don-e to pick us up like we had planned I made the choice to try to beat the storm and walk home. We made it, with Don-e not five minutes behind us. Within another five it hit. The hail started off relatively small, and to be honest it was more than I ever expected it to be. We have gotten several of these hail warnings since we moved here but have never seen it happen. Within the twenty minutes the storm stayed in our area the stones did indeed reached the size of golf balls. We watched it rip apart several lawn chairs that had been left out on the lawn. It pulled apart strands of lights that we had hanging on our patio and shattered the bulbs. Within minutes the ground was covered. They stacked up to several inched deep. When they hit the ground they would bounce more than a foot high. All of our newly green trees where shredded.

We were in one of the worst hit areas, but not the worst. A friend of a friend was driving on one of the toll roads when she was hit. Both her windshield and rear window were shattered, while she was still driving. She told my friend that she thought she was going to die between the glass shards and pelting ice.

Skylights were broken, cars mutilated, roof destroyed.

The town that was hit just prior to ours had stones that piled up one and a half feet deep in the streets.The fire department there had to do the plowing.

A lady that I work with will have to pay two deductibles on two different cars. One for a rental she was driving and one for her car that was parked at a car dealership.

My in-laws and nephew were stuck huddled under a tree in the parking lot of the store they were going to.

But with all of that, with the fear and the destruction, there was such energy, such power alive in the air. The impact of the stones was like bullets assaulting the earth, but the battle field was majestic.

But afterwards the sky cleared and made way for a rainbow.