Oh, Hail!

We decided to go swimming on Saturday. It had been a hot muggy day, part of a hot and muggy week, and a swim sounded pretty good. Ironically, we hadn't been swimming in a very long time! We usually venture to the local DNR property, the Forest, and this afternoon was no different. We had only been swimming about a half an hour when we heard thunder. We didn't give it a second thought because the weather forecast had only predicted a 20% chance of rain for our area that evening. The sky started to turn more and more sinister, but it looked like it was way to the East. Finished with our impromptu swim, we hopped out, sort of dried off, and jumped into our jeep. Jeeps, of course, are highly recommended for summer driving--top completely down, cool breezes no matter how hot--all is good. You can see where I am going with this. We got about 1/3 of the way home when it started to rain. Now, raining while in a moving jeep isn't that big of a deal. If you're moving, the airflow will keep it from hitting you--it actually just goes over the hood, up the windshield, and right over the top. Usually. I have been caught in many a rain shower, and have rarely gotten wet. However, this was not normal. It hit so hard and so fast. It came down in sheets and from all angles all at the same time. We were already more wet then dry from swimming so it really didn't matter how much wetter we got, or so we naively thought. We were laughing. Then it started to hail. Again, we thought it was sort of funny. We'd never been hailed on before and it sort of felt like we were being salted. In fact, it looked like coarse salt. Then, all hail broke loose! The hail got bigger and bigger and just pelted us. Our laughter turned to screams--it was so incredibly painful! We pulled over in the first driveway we could, frantically leaped out of the jeep, and ran for cover, settling on standing under someone's garage overhang to wait out the deluge. It eased up a bit, so we leaped back into our jeep anxious to just get home. Now, we don't live that far from where we were swimming-maybe 5 miles, and by this time we were only a couple miles from home. But it was a long couple of miles! Although the rain and hail were less intense, they hadn't completely stopped. By the time we pulled in our drive, and under our deck, the jeep was full of hail and sloshing from all the rain, and we were freezing!  A hot shower never sounded so good.  And to think we went swimming to start with to beat the heat and humidity of the day! It turns out that a nearby town suffered quite a bit of storm damage from this event--downed trees, power lines, shingles and shutters blown away not to be recovered.