Sunday, June 30, 2019

Mosaic Monday #34 - Hail!

Thursday began as many another day - a glorious sunrise tinting the sky all manner of pink and blue.  Spousal Unit woke me to ensure I had the opportunity to absorb the majesty.  And then we dozed.


A scant hour later, something else, a little less gentle and little less majestic, interrupted our sleep.  Hail.

It was brief, but it was prolific and loud.  We gave up any attempt to get back to sleep a second time and got on with our day.  With questionable weather, this meant overdue house cleaning (yay!). On one of my trips to the garage, I noticed that the hail lingered well into the afternoon (see it in the valley of the roof?).  I set off for my afternoon run with a few puffy clouds for company.  Precisely 56 minutes later, I returned to the house accompanied by ominous clouds and thunder punctuated by lightning.  And then the heavens opened.

In less than 20 minutes, an inch of liquid precipitation fell, and that does not count the hail.  We watched the spectacle in disbelief, awe and little bit of despair.  Check out this video of the hail accumulating below a valley in the roof.

Toward the end of Nature's tirade, it looked like this.

Would you like a close-up?

And why the "despair", you might ask?  Our landscaping, built with "drought-tolerant plants", was not designed for torrential downpours, so this is what happens.
Gravity puts a stream wherever it makes sense
Dark material - "mill mud" - was carried onto gravel paths,
marring the clean look.  And it's hard to get out of the gravel!
Some plants lost leaves and flowers

And can I tell you how different this is from last June?  This time last year we were watering every three days because we'd had no rain since the beginning of the month.

Of course, this is nothing in comparison to what people have had to deal with in terms of real flooding.  As I scooped up the mill mud and dumped it back in the rightful spot, I imagined homeowners scraping mountains of mud out of their homes, all the while piling useless furniture and soiled belongings on the curb to be taken away.

Yes, my moment of "despair" shall pass.  The next morning, I went kayaking with my dear neighbor friend.  The calm of the lake stood in sharp relief against the clattering and banging of the mighty storm just 14 hours earlier.  A veritable balm for my soul.

Happy Canada Day to my friends north of the border, and Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans!


Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.
Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.
The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Monday (U.S. Mountain time).
Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.
Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.
As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.
Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.
Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us.
 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

40 comments:

  1. ...I would just as soon NOT see white stuff until December! Occasional we will get hail, but not enough to shovel!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The weather has been weird this year! Great photos!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow... terrible weather! We have a very hot summer here.

    Happy MosaicMonday

    ReplyDelete
  4. Holy smokes! That hail is crazy. And sorry about your landscaping.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh hail no, it's not fun to have that white things pouring down! Your place is so beautiful, we're in awe every time we see it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I now fear rain as it brings hail. I fear snow now as it brings ice. Crazy to be on such intimate terms with precip. but that's our normal in CO. We get rain daily here now, and people still talk about how dry it is. Your pics are lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dearest Diane; To tell the truth, I've never experience or seen hail. The video really surprised me. Well, sorry for the nature's attack; but I am impressed by the way arranged this post. Glorious morning: Nature's tirade: A veritable balm for my soul. I LOVE the beautiful picture of the lake with the reflection♬
    Hope you will have a wonderful new week and Thank you very much for hosting.
    Lots of Love and Hugs from Japan, xoxo Miyako*

    ReplyDelete
  8. hail in spring/summer? The next morning canoeing on the lake looks much more like a northern summer to me. Enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow what a pile of hail! We had just a tad, nothing like you. Great photos, Angie. Beautiful still lake to kayak on! Hope you have a great 4th of July week!

    ReplyDelete
  10. That's a whole heck of a lot of hail. Crazy weather for sure. My CO boy was able to kayak a couple of weeks ago and went camping/trekking just this past weekend. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to with rivers rushing and snow still found in many places. I wanted to cry when he sent pictures of how beautiful everything is while I'm trying to adjust to temperatures now reaching 120 most days and being stuck indoors. :(

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hail! That really was quite a hail storm. Your plants will probably be fine but I know it's disturbing...in more ways than one. I'm glad you got out and enjoyed the day though. What a gorgeous lake...and a beautiful photo! Happy MM! Hugs!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Climate change will cause us much concern in the years to come, Angie. We have had all sorts of anomalies in our weather and some poor Spring flowers have appeared in mid-winter, only to succumb to frost...

    ReplyDelete
  13. The cloud shot is magical but weather patterns are strange. There was a tornado at a provincial park in northern Saskatchewan. Hail fell the size of golf balls and winds of about a hundred miles an hour uprooted the trees.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wow look at the hail! We dodged the bullet on that storm. I was all set to grab a sheet to cover my hostas. Now we have lovely Montana weather for the start of July. Have a Happy 4th! Your friend to the south. :) Kit

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ugh! Happy 4th to you as well. And wishes for warm winds to you.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'm amazed at that weather/all that hail in one go. Yes, Mother Nature can be surprising and upsetting too. Thankfully as you say, not as severe as some parts of the country and I do believe the plants will bounce back. Fires out west here in Canada are devastating some provinces sadly. Hope your Glorious 4th is just that!
    I love the photo from your canoe. Gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Angie, Amazing video! That last photo kayaking is so great and peaceful. Thanks for sharing and have a great week. Sylvia D.

    ReplyDelete
  18. The lake photo is lovely. I'm not a fan of hail. I read that parts of Mexico had "hail drifts" several feet deep, like snow drifts.

    ReplyDelete
  19. There seem to be extremes of weatyer all over the world these days. You sure got a lot of hail and such a contrast to your time on the lake, what a beautiful photo.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Interesting story. Weather is so amazing. Here in wet western Washington we are in a drought already. For the month of June we have had a total of 1/2 inch of rain. Strange, right!

    ReplyDelete
  21. One day hail, the next day kayaking, quite a change!!
    We've been having a good amount of both rain and sun here in western MD.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Love the log structure of your home. It has been such a strange year for weather. We have been getting some rain despite the forecast for a summer longer and hotter than normal. I'm not complaining. Our lake was dropping dramatically and at least for five days it has stabilized. Either the draw out at the dam to make electricity is balanced by the snow melt, or the mill is slowing down and needs less power. You never know which. - Margy

    ReplyDelete
  23. Very rarely we will get snow, and generally it'll be pebble sized like that. I'm slowly getting caught up on blog reading after being offline for a couple of days, so Happy Fourth of July to you!

    ReplyDelete
  24. the video was unbelievable, i guess that is pretty unusual for montana!! and sorry about your pretty landscaping, that's a bummer!!

    the reflection image of the clouds is gorgeous!!

    and you run?? why would you run unless something is chasing you?? and 56 minutes, don't you think that is a bit extreme?? jk, hehehehehe!!!

    ReplyDelete
  25. WOW - that hail pile is something else! And it just poured!

    How nice to get out kayaking, though. What a beautiful spot.

    ReplyDelete
  26. You're right to be philosophical about that unexpected weather, especially as you (and I) know that weather can be freaky. You don't have to explain that to someone from England. I remember a cricket match in Buxton one June was cancelled because of snow covering the pitch and ground.

    ReplyDelete
  27. We had hail last month, nothing like the stuff you received, but enough that I suspect the hummingbird that had been a regular visitors in our yard was killed by it. She has not been seen since that day, whereas before she was predictable three or four times a day.

    ReplyDelete
  28. That last photos is stunning! It's pretty cold and wet here - more November than July!

    ReplyDelete
  29. In here it is finally colder that it was, I couldn't stand more than 30 C!:)

    ReplyDelete
  30. Hah - summer in Montana!!! <3 Somewhere in the southern Finland the was also a hail shower, but not at my place. The weather is so odd: we have had cool, windy & rainy days - Central Europe under heat wave!

    ReplyDelete
  31. That's crazy all that hail and the next day back to sun. I hope your days improve as the month goes onward. Beautiful sunrise!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Wow! What weather and great photos of Mother's Nature tantrum ~ weird weather everywhere I guess ~

    Happy Day to you,
    A ShutterBug Explores,
    aka (A Creative Harbor)

    ReplyDelete
  33. thank you for sharing of crazy weather....hail in the summer....
    Hope, beautiful summer …….

    ReplyDelete
  34. Wow - what a bunch of hail. We had pleasant weather for the 4th and lots of good food and family fun. Today it is raining and we are just recuperating from all the fun of yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Oh we have had some funky weather alright this year. Sorry about the landscaping. My wife has almost given up for this summer.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Oh my goodness, that weather sure is crazy.

    All the best Jan

    ReplyDelete