The storm of the century

Today I'm going to post more than one photo, because I couldn't tell the story of Wednesday night's weather with just a single image. I was at my studio around 7:00pm, working hard, when it started to rain. I didn't pay much attention until it suddenly started to sound really violent out there. I went to the window to see what was going on and, having grown up in the Philippines, all I can tell you is that it looked like a typhoon was passing over my building! Insanely high winds whipping the trees around, lashing sheets of rain -- it was like I was reliving the storms of my childhood on Luzon. Then the hail started. Thankfully the worst of it passed relatively quickly and settled into merely high winds and rain instead of tornado-like winds, Niagara falls and hail. I was able to dash out of there and meet my friends for pub quiz relatively unscathed.

What I didn't realize was that in the area where my house is, and especially in my brother's neighborhood, the storm was far more lasting and violent. My friend Stephani texted me from her home in the middle of the maelstrom, saying she was trapped by the hail and afraid to go outside. 45 minutes later she was still trapped and there was two feet of water in her backyard. Luckily my house wasn't as hard hit as hers, but when I got home from pub quiz at 10:30pm there was still hail in my yard, and my entire street, everyone's yards and most of the roofs in my neighborhood were literally covered in debris from the trees, plus mud everywhere. It must have been crazy and I missed the entire thing, holed up as I was at my studio. When I saw the footage on the news of my brother's neighborhood, I was dumbfounded. People trapped in their cars with water and hail up to the windows, basements flooded, trees down. The hail was the size of golf balls. It was insane!

So yesterday Pat and I decided to take a drive down to the Citadel Mall, which was apparently the epicenter of the madness, and we were just amazed at what we saw. Enormous parking lots still covered in hail (and this was at high noon on a very warm day) while earth movers and dump trucks were hard at work trying to remove the hail and debris from the streets in that neighborhood. I've lived here since I was 14 years old, and I'll be the first to say that we have crazy weather here but I've never seen anything quite like this! Our mayor called it the Storm of the Century. I have to agree.

The above photo shows a parking lot deep with hail and debris while cleanup crews toil in the background on Chelton Road. More photos below. And HERE is a link to one of our local news stations showing video of the storm (watch it, you'll be amazed).

Here's Pat posing in front of a huge pile of hail and debris, the day after the storm.

An earth-mover and crews working to get the hail and debris off the streets.

A few people showed up to watch the clean-up.

Another view of the earth-mover. Look at that huge load!  While we were there we watched it scoop up several like this. It was truly mind-boggling.