charlie sherrill
Member
I was on the way home from work today when I caught up with a big black cloud. It started with a little rain and light hail and developed into a lot of rain and wind and larger hail. I was about a mile from home when a pine tree blew down across the road in front of me. The rain,wind, and hail was picking up big time as I tried to turn around and go another way only to find myself blocked by an oak tree across the road where I had just come from. I was stuck between the two trees. I could hear other officers talking on the radio about the downed trees,flash flooding, hailstones, and high winds. I was reminded of Hurricane Katrina. There was a constant pinging sound on my car from the hailstones. Most of them were between the size of a pea and a nickel. Every few seconds the big ones would hit the car and the noise reminded me of the bricks thrown at my car during a riot many years ago.
My son called my cell in a panic. Stuff was blowing away at my house and his new Government Motors pickup was out in the storm. I told him to stay inside until the storm blows over because there's nothing he can do until it's over. I was still stuck between two downed trees. I recorded the time the hail started until it stopped. Start time 1550. End time 1607. 17 minutes. I thought that was kind of long for a hail storm. It seemed like an hour. After about 30 minutes a county crew arrived with chainsaws and cleared the road. My shift was over 30 minutes ago so I was now able to go home and check on things.
When I got home the first thing I saw was a piece of metal roofing from an out building wrapped around a tree. Rabbit cages were blown over as well as a cage that housed the chicken bitties. The bitties had gone into shock. They looked dead and two of the 23 were actually dead. They needed warmth real fast or all of them were going to die. The power was out and would be for another 2 1/2 hours and Jr. was trying to start my Katrina generator. The battery was dead. I jumped it off with the patrol car. We got a hair dryer and two lamps going with the generator and the chicks began to come back to life. We were able to warm them up and get them back to normal.
I began to check for any other damage. The new GM truck miraculously escaped any hail damage. The patrol car I was in now has a few character dings. We righted the cages and captured a few escapees. The garden was a mess. The corn and squash were flattened. The tomatoes are beat up but will probably be OK. There was no real damage to anything else that I can see right now. We were gonna pull the corn Friday anyway so we went ahead and did it today. I'll blanch it tomorrow and freeze it. I had some flounder caught last weekend that that we were going to cook this evening with some friends but the power outage killed that so I guess we'll do it tomorrow evening. The sub I had for supper wasn't too bad though.
My son called my cell in a panic. Stuff was blowing away at my house and his new Government Motors pickup was out in the storm. I told him to stay inside until the storm blows over because there's nothing he can do until it's over. I was still stuck between two downed trees. I recorded the time the hail started until it stopped. Start time 1550. End time 1607. 17 minutes. I thought that was kind of long for a hail storm. It seemed like an hour. After about 30 minutes a county crew arrived with chainsaws and cleared the road. My shift was over 30 minutes ago so I was now able to go home and check on things.
When I got home the first thing I saw was a piece of metal roofing from an out building wrapped around a tree. Rabbit cages were blown over as well as a cage that housed the chicken bitties. The bitties had gone into shock. They looked dead and two of the 23 were actually dead. They needed warmth real fast or all of them were going to die. The power was out and would be for another 2 1/2 hours and Jr. was trying to start my Katrina generator. The battery was dead. I jumped it off with the patrol car. We got a hair dryer and two lamps going with the generator and the chicks began to come back to life. We were able to warm them up and get them back to normal.
I began to check for any other damage. The new GM truck miraculously escaped any hail damage. The patrol car I was in now has a few character dings. We righted the cages and captured a few escapees. The garden was a mess. The corn and squash were flattened. The tomatoes are beat up but will probably be OK. There was no real damage to anything else that I can see right now. We were gonna pull the corn Friday anyway so we went ahead and did it today. I'll blanch it tomorrow and freeze it. I had some flounder caught last weekend that that we were going to cook this evening with some friends but the power outage killed that so I guess we'll do it tomorrow evening. The sub I had for supper wasn't too bad though.
