What the Hail?

 

Holy hail! This picture was taken in 1983. Looking at the size of those hailstones, it's not surprising that there was damage done. Mom said they had to tap the homeowner's insurance to get the house partially re-roofed. The big front window at Owsleys got broken (neighbors who were out of town). It caused dents and broken windows in cars too. 1983 was remembered more for the flooding that year, but I'm sure glad the folks thought to document the size of these impressive ice balls!

As old photographs are resurfacing after being scanned, the huge hailstones of 1983 started this trip down memory lane. Just for fun, I stuck "hail" in the search bar in Dropbox (and in the Blackham Blog), which is how some of these connections came up. There were some mentions in journals and letters too (included at the end). 

While it's not quite as large as the 1983 memory, 2013 had some pretty good hail hit the Blackhams in West Jordan. Jen had done a blog post then and wrote "I was downstairs in our home gym, when I heard a rattling. There was something, make that several somethings hitting the window ... it was a hail storm. I cut my workout short and came up to check on Cooper, who was cowering in my room crying. I comforted him and as quickly as it had started, the hail storm was over. I convinced Cooper to come out and check out the hail (the other kids were already out there). There were a lot of big pieces. That definitely would have hurt to get caught out in. There was a lot of hail on the trampoline, and the kids gathered even more. Then they jumped on the tramp in their bare feet! Crazy kids ... it was a bit like hot potato, but it was cold hail!"

St. George, February 2014

 This hailstorm was enough of a memory that it made it into Josh's annual recap, 

and Wendy had documented it on their family blog. 

Again, while not as impressive in size ... 

Janika's mission hailstone memory makes up for it in quantity!

May 2016, Janika wrote "We had this super weird storm in the middle of the night, and it was terrifying haha. My thinking process was something along the lines of 'okay, if it was really a problem, they'd have the sirens, right? Then we'd go find a storm shelter....oh my gosh where is the storm shelter?! do we even have one of those here?!?!' Needless to say, there was a little panic involved but no sirens, so we survived. We woke up to a foot and a half of marble-sized hail filling our parking lot, so we spent morning exercise helping a neighbor dig his truck out of the hail!! Only in Nebraska!"

Blackham Backyard - September 2019

Jen remembers a few hailstorms during the duck years (2015-2019). Worrying that the ducks might get hit and hurt during the storms. 

The leafy plants did not survive the storm in 2019. They got shredded!

Now a few more memories from letters and journals ...

• In 1978, Dad had kept a journal about the scout trip to Wind Rivers. He wrote "during the trip up, the dark clouds suddenly gathered, and it started to hail, hailstones about an inch in diameter. We felt sorry for the scouts we had left behind, and especially for our packs. When we got back, it had stopped hailing momentarily, and most of the scouts had taken refuge under nearby trees. They had also placed the packs under vehicles close by. When we got packed, the hail began again, and all the scouts huddled in the suburban. The hail lasted for another 10 minutes and then subsided. We decided to try the trail and warily donned our packs and set out – with very threatening skies all around." 
• In 2015, while Landon was in the MTC he wrote "We were in our classroom studying, and the rain came pouring down! Thunder and lightning soon joined, and then the rain changed to hail. We didn't even bother studying. We were all just mesmerized by the storm."
• Also in 2015, Jase wrote about hail during the Pioneer Trek, he wrote "it started hailing on and off every day. In fact, one day it hailed so bad the tents flooded and we had to evacuate the camp."
• In 2017, the Redwood Shore (Shane's family) Westras wrote "Happy March! It's hard to say if the month has come in like a lamb or a lion...we had pretty nice weather earlier in the week, but it was rainy yesterday and today. We even had a short burst of hail this morning while we were at church! We could hear it pounding on the roof and one of the men in our Sunday School class opened an exterior door to investigate, so we even got a glimpse of the hail coming down."
• Also in 2017, Wendy wrote a family update, mentioning how she and the girls had been swimming on Labor Day, when a little later " a huge storm came in and it was hailing marble sized hailstones!! Hailing in September, when it was over 100 degrees that day? Crazy!! So much for our clean pool."

So now you know ... weird weather gets collected and documented on the blog!

Next time it hails ... get pictures! 

Any more hail memories?