Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Sky is Falling!


The hail roils the pond.


Grapefruit size hail on the deck. (The photo distorts the dimensions.)

We're relatively immune to natural disaster here in Vermont. (Some people think the taxes here are a natural disaster, but that's another issue.) There are no earthquakes, volcanoes or hurricanes (at least not recently). We can get wind storms although what sometimes passes for heavy wind here is just a stiff breeze out in say Kansas. (For example, one of our local weatherman has a tendency to exclaim, "With winds up to 40 mph!") And there is some flooding along our local rivers, but most of our communities aren't build in the floodplain of one of the world's mightiest rivers. I hope the people who live along the Mississippi watershed don't take offense. You'll imagine our surprise then when yesterday it started to hail, threatening our crops, our homes, any cars parked outside and our plans to run out and get a creamee. You always hear about "golf ball sized hail" and "soccer ball sized hail", and although I did exaggerate for the photo caption, the hail was marble sized. Fortunately it didn't last long and didn't appear to take out my corn. If it had I'm afraid we might have starved this Winter. Of course the really discouraging thing is that it's July and we're already getting freezing precipitation. Gonna be a hard Winter.

2 comments:

525 Worldwide said...

Far be it from me to nitpick or backseat edit, but the moon shot would have been perfect for a July 20 post...

Flatlander said...

Unfortunately the moon wasn't out on the 20th, not here anyway. My dep integrity as a blogger would have prevented me from fudging the date. (If you believe that, I've got some real estate I'd like to sell you.) Also, having lived through the moon landings, I feel they have been over hyped. I mean, the moon landings seem to be the only thing Americans refer to in order to justify our greatness to ourselves and the rest of the world. And lastly, I didn't really know that the first landing took place on 20 July.