Oh Hail...

This weekend we made a trip to Mobile! It had been a month since we had graced the town with our presence, so in my opinion it was long overdue! ;] There's nothing better than going back to mobtown to see everyone. I don't think a weekend is long enough though.. Basically we have one and 1/2 days to squeeze everyone in. It makes for a busy trip! We won't be back to Mobile until Easter weekend.. so about another month. We had a great time and didn't leave till about 3:15pm. The time change is great because we can leave a little later and still get back during daylight. Josh started saying stuff about leaving around 2.. but I said we're fine.. let's stick around just a little bit longer. I was actually very tired (thank you pregnancy), but I am kind of getting use to the feeling of exhaustion 24/7. So I kept Josh from trying to rush off because he always is trying to rush off from everything. Now let me explain why the fact that we stayed that extra hour was such a big deal...

We had an easy drive and had made it to 84 around Daleville when we started noticing this stuff on the ground that looked like snow. We both looked at each other with confusion on our faces because ummm it's 70 something degrees out.. obviously way too hot for snow. We keep driving and the snow ice stuff is everywhere.. Finally the curiosity is too much and we pull over to find out what this mystery is! As we pull to a stop I manage to yell out "It's hail!!" I was pretty proud of myself because I figured out what it was before Josh, who is Mr. Meteorology Minor. It was the last thing we were expecting because it never storms here in the Wiregrass! I even said that this weekend to my mom.. or a lot of times it will just rain for 5 minutes and then move on. So Josh gets out of the truck to pick up the hail.. The hail ranged from the size of a penny to a ping pong ball.. and there was LOTS of it. We got back on the road to home and talked about how glad we were that the storm hit in Daleville. There were limbs down and leaves everywhere. We kept driving and didn't notice anymore hail.. "whew" was our thought.. glad we don't have to worry about our house. We turn down the main road that heads toward our neighborhood and merge onto the county road.. when our attitudes changed. Josh says "Ohhhh nooo..." I say "You think there was a tornado?" Josh continues his "Oh no's and Oh man's" and "This isn't goods" as we look around and see hail.. leaves everywhere, limbs down.. The road was literally covered in leaves. And it just kept getting worse the closer we got to our neighborhood. We make the final turn before our neighborhood and all you see is hail... and the pretty pear trees that are just torn apart and missing their leaves. Since I have grown up on the Gulf Coast I can only describe that it looked like we had been through a hurricane. We both were holding our breath as we drove closer to our house as we look at our neighbors houses... When we pull into our driveway all I see is hail, thick hail, that has destroyed my flower bed. We jump out of the car and this is what we see..

The hail ranged from the size of a quarter to a golf ball (just in our yard - there were reports of tennis ball size hail).. Leaves were plastered to our house, grass had turned to dirt, spotlights were shattered, my hummingbird feeder shattered, grill cover looked like it had gone through a shredder, the vinyl on the back of our house is cracked, the roof on our porch is all dented, our air conditioning unit has dents, and the biggest of all... our roof is all messed up! It's really not something you want to drive up too.. especially when you weren't expecting it! At least for hurricanes you know what's coming and you know what to expect... We didn't even know there was severe weather in our forecast. Josh talked to our neighbors and found out the storm hit about 4:06pm it came from the west and we experienced straight line winds around 60 mph. The back of our house faces the west, so we got hit pretty bad. Thankfully our windows didn't shatter and our screened in porch wasn't shredded. We have a large oak tree behind our house that I believe helped shield the house. One neighbor said the storm was like noting she had ever heard. It sounded like a train was about to plow through her house and could hear glass being shattered outside. She was hiding in the bathtub for fear of a tornado. There were no reports of tornados, but straight line winds can be more damaging than a small tornado. I'm just thankful we came home to a house still standing. It could've been a lot worse and everything can be replaced. So here are a few thoughts to close out this blog... First - if I hadn't told Josh that we can stay a little longer than we could've been driving when that storm hit. Second - if I hadn't convinced Josh it was time to visit Mobile and we had been in town, I would've had a serious panic attack. I can't imagine the noise that storm was making and I know I would've been in the bathtub trying to hold both dogs and I know Josh wouldn't of listened to me and gotten in the bathtub too. That whole situation would not of been good for the pregnancy! We were about an hour and a half after the storm hit and the hail was still huge.. I can't imagine the size of it before it started melting. God was watching out for us!
Here are a few more pictures from our hail storm from the 27th of March: