WHAT the HAIL* * *

Hey, Grandma, have you seen my swim goggles?  

click on any photo to enlarge

What the Hail...is going on with this weather?  We had a short-lived hail storm a few days ago.  The powerful rains lasted less than 8 minutes dumping 2 inches of rain and then came the hail.

 As small as what the actual hailstones were, from tiny to the size of a dime, it still did a considerable amount of damage to our vegetable gardens.  The green beans were torn and left pounded into the mud.

 The onions have white spots on their leaves from where they were pelted with the hail.  The same happened to everything that shows it's growth above the grounds surface, sugar snap peas, green beans were left with the burn marks of the icy hail.

 The broad corn leaves are now in shreds but the corn will be fine so long as it doesn't get hit again as the ears develop further.

 The carrots lay on the ground with broken fronds.

 The tomatoes lay all over the ground pounded off by the hail's fury, leaving it's mark all over the tomatoes that managed to hang on.  The white spots speckling the fruit and the stems show proof of damaging weather.

 We remain grateful that the pumpkins were just getting their start.  Had this storm arrived when our pumpkins were fully grown, we could have lost the entire field of them.

 We do not, however, hold much hope of eating cucumbers this year.  Our patch was destroyed leaving only once cucumber. Before the storm, you could not see any ground where the cucumber plants once were. 

 Tiny crystals of ice certainly can create a lot of despair for the average gardeners such as ourselves.

 What the hail did not destroy, the rampant rains washed away.

 The rain fell so hard but when the hail started, and the wind from the west, we thought for sure our west windows were going to crack or blow out under the pressure.

During all of this, Bill was splitting wood at the cabin and was forced to run for cover, it came so quickly.  He headed for the garage to sit it out, saying he had to keep moving his chair back because it was hailing in so hard....and loud, he said it was so loud pounding against the metal roof.

Traffic pulled off the highway because it was so slippery with the couple inches of hail.  To top it off, the power was also out for several hours.  Never a dull moment.

Through those amazing 8 minutes, there was still room for a miracle.

 Not one of my paper thin poppies were destroyed.  They stood tall throughout the storm while the corn got cut down to half it's size.

So in spite of ice at the end of July and damaged gardens, we can rest assured that the root crops will still produce for us.  We may not be eating many tomatoes this year but we will have our carrots and beets.  I even think the cabbage will make it.

All my life I've heard that if you want to see a rapid change in weather, come to Wisconsin.  We do have it all.

Have a great week and stay safe.