Hail Yes

It's been unseasonably warm all winter long, particularly in February.  In this area of the country, warm weather in February or March usually is bad news, because it's a harbinger of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.

Last Friday, the reports of severe and threatening weather were so ominous that many counties in middle Tennessee closed schools early.  I thought that was a little silly until I picked up J.P. from school at 3:15 p.m. while the Twitter feed on my cell phone was blowing up with news of tornado warnings in our area (Davidson County).  I got him home as quick as I could, then gathered Jude, Joey and J.P. and headed down into the basement just to be safe.

The winds really picked up but, fortunately, we avoided any tornadoes.  What we didn't avoid was a rather impressive hail storm.  After it passed, J.P. and I went outside and found the ground covered with hail stones the size of golf balls.  He was fascinated by the hail stones.  We filled a couple of plastic bowls up with hail stones and took them inside for closer examination.  J.P. had a thousand questions about hail and I laughed as Jude tried to answer them all.

J.P., carefully examining the hail stones with his magnifying glass.  We still have some in the freezer.