When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #32

Story #32 - It’s the middle and July and we survived the hailstorm!

Have you ever been in a hailstorm? It’s noisy!

I was somewhere between 10 and 12 years old. The month was July and it was hot! We had a freak thunderstorm. I can vividly remember how ‘black’ the clouds looked. I think it was about mid-morning.

All of the sudden the wind blew and the storm hit and we scurried around closing all the windows in the house. Then we looked out the kitchen window into the front yard and saw hail starting to hit the driveway in front of the house. Then it just peppered the ground. It seemed to last about 20 minutes. Our house was made of adobe and stucco and it muffled the sound. The pantry was made out of cinder block and you could hear it come down on that roof. It passed over us and then we went outside to ‘inspect’ what had happened! First we went to go out through the pantry entrance to the backyard but we couldn’t get the back door open. Then we had to go out the front door onto the porch and we walked around to the back of the house. Oh, my goodness! The wind direction that blew the storm in came right at the back of the house. I remember wearing my slippers (thongs) and I was in shorts and there was about a foot and a half of hail piled up against the screen door! No wonder it wouldn’t open! I remember getting a shovel and shoveling the hail off the back step. It also damaged that corner of the roof. My dad had to repair it. It stripped the leaves off of some of the tree branches. We had elm trees growing along side the driveway on the west side of the house, by the pantry side. We looked out into the cotton field next to our fence. The cotton was stripped! It was like every other row of cotton was standing and every other row was stripped.

The hail came through in ribbons. It was weird the way that happened. There were cars that had hail damage, little dents in the cars. Stores had some damage. It was a pretty strong hailstorm that blew that morning. I never saw another one after that. It’s the only storm I can remember ever while I lived there and I lived in Tularosa for 20 years too.

This reminds me of one other really bad hailstorm that grandpa and Kirsten and I experienced in May 2006. We went down to San Antonio, Texas to pick David up from A-School. He was in the US Navy. He was finished and was being stationed in Bangor, Washington, about 1-½ hours from where we lived in Covington, Washington. We had heard on the radio in our motel room that thunderstorm and hailstorms were going to be in the area. Well the storm hit and the wind blew and the rain came down sideways. Then the hail started. The hail was as big as jawbreaker candy! The power went out. It was dark! The storm lasted for about an hour. In the morning we assessed the damage. The west end our two-story motel was pocked full of holes. Its' siding was ruined! Our car had little tiny dents all over the roof. It cracked our right side view mirror and a small piece fell out onto the pavement. We took pictures right then so we would have them to show our insurance company. David was about 8 miles away and they didn’t get any hail, just wind and rain. That was the worst storm I had ever experienced and I ‘never’ want to experience another one like it! I prayed hard that we would all be safe and we were.

Grandpa says that we got better gas mileage on the way back. Now our car was more ‘aero-dynamic’ like a golf ball!