A Stormy Night

In last night's storm we had some hail, lots of wind, and tons of rain. There was actually enough rain to make a nice river run through that drainage ditch at the back of our property - which is fairly rare. The water was high enough we could see it by just looking out the window and looking back behind the shed where you could see it flowing. I'd say it was probably 5-6 feet deep back there at one point. Fortunately, the drainage system works well and it goes away pretty quickly.

I didn't get the camera out fast enough to catch a good picture of all the hail covering the deck before the rain melted all of it. There was a nice size piece that bounced up under the eave by the door and it hadn't melted yet because there wasn't much rain hitting it. I held it for probably 30 seconds before Anita got the picture too, so it was actually quite a bit bigger I'm sure when it fell.

Conner wanted to go out really bad into the rain. We told him he couldn't because it was raining really hard. So, what did he do? He disappeared into the other room, and came back in rain boots, a jacket, and a hard hat and said, "I'm ready to go outside, I've got my storm clothes on." At that point, we decided he made a good case for himself and since it hadn't hailed in probably 15-20 minutes and the lightning had stopped, we let him go stand out on the deck for 2 or 3 minutes in the rain. His gear worked pretty well. His clothes didn't get wet at all.

Zach really wanted to go out as well, but his rain gear was significantly less sufficient. He really enjoyed looking outside and watching the rain and hail though. When Conner did go out, he tried to go out too and wasn't really too happy about the fact that he didn't get to go either. He was mad enough about it in fact, that Anita finally just said, "FINE. We'll ALL get out in the rain then." and she picked him up and stepped outside for about 10 seconds and then brought him back in.

All in all, we had a great evening "surviving the storms" and we were exceptionally lucky that our power didn't even go out. It's hard to be all that happy though, when you know how many people are moving on from destroyed homes and others are carrying on without loved ones this week.