Texas-sized hail.....

A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to experience a Texas hail storm. They interrupt all the stations here for any type of severe weather. We knew that this storm was coming because we saw the red blob heading right towards our city on the Doppler maps. We lived in our apartment at the time and our cars were not covered. The weatherman told us that there could be quarter-sized hail, we knew we wanted to get our cars under a carport. {one of our neighbors cars has been through some pretty mean hail storms, his car has dents all over it. we didn't want our car to be all dented.} Luckily Mamau and Jana were in town and they stayed with the kids while we ran to cover both cars. We found two unoccupied spaces {our complex made you pay extra for a covered spot...stupid} and as we were running back to our apartment the rain started. As soon as we opened the door a big clap of thunder hit and the hail started. We had made just in the nick of time. We watched from our boys bedroom window as HUGE hail smashed on the ground below. Some people went out and tried to move their cars to an empty carport but the hail and rain was falling so hard and fast they couldn't even see through their windshields. The hail storm was so loud, it freaked Peyton right out. He pointed straight at the roof and said with all the anger and emotion in his little body, "You better stop you idiot thunder! You're damn-it!" It was so hard not to laugh because he was so scared and that is all he could think to say to help him feel better. But, the mother inside of me had to step in and kindly remind him that we do not speak that way. After about 15 minutes the hail stopped. I have never experienced anything like this. I literally thought that it was going to shatter my windows. It was hitting SO hard. It was CRAZY! When it was all over, we went downstairs to see all of the hail. It looked like it had just snowed. Some pieces were small and some were HUGE. We took a picture of one of the big pieces that we found.

That is a quarter next to the piece of hail. Golf ball-sized hail I believe!
Luckily no windows were broken and our cars were untouched. Some of the people that had left their cars out had little dents on their cars. I am so glad that we moved our cars! That would have annoyed me!
Later that week we had baseball sized hail hit the house that we moved into. It actually cracked two of the windows. There is some crazy weather down here in Texas!