The weather gods must be crazy

Last Wednesday, I was "on call" to photograph my assistant giving birth to her third daughter. Joy notified me before noon that she was in labor, but as you know, sometimes hours or even a day or two can go by before the ball really starts to get rolling with these things. Nevertheless, I was on edge as I spent the afternoon in meetings and running errands all over town. My penultimate stop took me to a part of town called Southgate, and while I was there an incredible hailstorm hit. It only lasted a few minutes, but it dumped an amazing amount of hail in that short time. I hunkered down inside a building until the storm passed, then fought my way by car up South Nevada Avenue to run my final errand, downtown. It took AGES. The hail had forced the traffic to a crawl at best. It took me at least half an hour to drive two miles (actually 2.1 miles, to be exact). The top picture shows how the road looked as I drove on Southgate Road, before turning onto Nevada. It was about three times worse on Nevada, and there was an incredible amount of water as well. I didn't take any pictures of my agonizingly slow drive on Nevada, because it was bumper-to-bumper traffic. The pictures below show Cucharras Street downtown, a little north of the worst of the storm.

Needless to say, it was stressful. As I finally made my way home, I received the text from Joy telling me to come now! I made it to her house in time for the last hour or so of labor, then we all went to the hospital, where I got to witness a birth for the first time in my life. It was an amazing experience! If you're curious to see pictures of Emma's birth, they're on my other blog, HERE.

An unfortunate side effect of hailstorms is that the trees and plants get shredded.

This is on Cucharras Street, just north of the worst part of the storm.

This house's windows were blown out by the hail!