Impressive Hail Storm

 This morning we saw some interesting weather.  Lightning was in the area for a long time (well over an hour.)  It seemed like the rolling of thunder would just never quit.  Some strikes were pretty close (less than a second from light to sound) but no damage has been found here.  Then, just before 8 a.m. it started to hail and, it kept hailing for 15 MINUTES!  That's the longest hail storm I can remember.  I grabbed the camera and tried to document some of what I was seeing. 

As you can see on the photo at  the left, some of the hail was over 1/2-inch in diameter.  (Click on any photo to see it larger.)  This photo was taken some 20 minutes after the end of the storm so the size may have diminished a bit.  The temperature is 53-degrees right now an hour after the storm passed, and there is still a surprising amount of the hail visible. 

The concrete streets were partially covered down the center of the lane.  In places where the hail was able to accumulate, it looked like a large winter snow storm had completely covered the ground.  In the photo on the right you can see where the snow had over-filled the gutter and run off the roof in one place (next to the generator), and piled up more than 12-inches deep.  There is a wide shot of the same location below.

 During the storm I was moving from room to room watching from various windows and listening to the hammering the house was taking.  Most impressive!  On the good side, there was no wind associated with this event.  As I write this at 9:10 a.m., the storm seems to have moved on to the East.