We are getting hammered!!! Hailstorm from hell...

[offramp]

...is hitting us right now. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.

Our deck is covered solid in hail, with about a half-inch or so of standing water under it. Our garden is destroyed. The patio lights are barely hanging in there, The window sills are FULL of hail. Driveways, sidewalks, yards are solid white...you'd think it was winter. The roof is roaring.

It's 9:06. The crawls on t.v. say flash floods until 11:45. This is one of the very few times I've actually ever been really worried/scared about what's going on. It wasn't sudden, but it was fast.

 

Oh, shit... I just realized that not all the cats are accounted for.

 

seeya.

[Tele Kinesis]

That was quite the storm that rolled through. By the time it got a little east of you, it must have just turned to hard rain, because I didn't hear any hail. I unplugged everything in my music room though! That was some wicked lightning. Around here, just about any moisture is good moisture, though.

Hope the cats are OK. I imagine if you had the lightning like we had, they probably crawled under something and hid until it was over.

 

Tele

[polyt]

There was so much hail there's still some left over this morning.

 

Those were some massive thunder heads!

[Dylan]

What the hail???

[offramp]

Damn.

 

Two of the three cats were outside. We'd figured they'd've hit the basement when the shit hit the fan, but no....they were under the deck. I went out and opened the people door to the garage so they'd see the light and run into the garage. Echo simply came out and started yelling at me...poor guy, totally soaked...Sofi eventually ran into the garage. She freaks out very easily so that was a handful.

 

Still a layer of hail on the deck. Our garden is in shambles. I'd left a box of matches on the grill; I'm amazed at the way the hail disintegrated it.

About three miles away, in Golden proper, a friend of a good friend of mine had her door broken down by the hail, with subsequent damage to the door frame and a basement full of water, to boot.

 

TeleK, we had some unbelieveable lightning, some of it the kind that is so close it floods the entire house. The thunder was right on top of us. I can't remember ever hearing a roof being hit so loud; I honestly thought we were going to lose a window or two.

 

We're supposed to have some more 'dry' thunderstorms tonight.

That's what they said LAST night.

[Blue Strat]

Hope you guys had your cars in the garage. Hope that's the end of it for you, hail can tear some shit up.

[TheFunkman]

1) Those Rocky Mountain thunderstorms can turn into regular ICE MACHINES in a hurry! I remember being caught in one near Westcliffe, CO, in the Sangre de Christo range. Those hail-creating updrafts must get some help from the mountains.

 

2) There's something uniquely terrifying about being RIGHT UNDER a lightning strike. It's not the usual "flash-BOOM." First, you're so close that you don't get the lightning's flash to warn you anything is coming. What you get is a blinding flash, combined with an intense, spine-rattling 120dB CRACKLE, all happening simultaneously. Uniqely disconcerting, to say the least. You get overwhelmed with that horror movie "I've gotta get outta here" feeling, TIMES TEN!

 

http://stormgasm.com/5-27-02CrosbytonTX/pics/supercell4s.jpg

[shniggens]

I saw the storm from my house (Aurora), Offramp, looked scary. Of course, we didn't get anything, as usual. I heard that there was golf ball sized was reported. Crazy.

 

The night before last, we were hit by a microburst with 70 MPH winds. And, of course, no freakin rain.

[offramp]

I'm next to a lake over by Coors. The sky directly above the lake was solid green. And it wasn't a happy shade. Front range, of course, was invisible.

 

Cars were in garage. And I can't tell you how happy I am that we HAVE a garage to use, after living with street parking for 5+ years.

 

Now, get this...all morning, it's been that 'post-devastation' sunny, calm stillness. In the past ten minutes, the wind has become kite-worthy, and there's a huge front with nice bulging, puffy leading clouds and dirty-grey backside, rising above the mountains.

Oh, hell...in just the time alone it took me to type that last paragraph, the progress of the front has been incredible.

[shniggens]

Yeah, it's supposed to do it again.

 

Batten down dem hatches! Or better yet, bust out dem skis!

[M Peasley]

As an ex-Denver resident, I remember some serious weather while I was in grad school in the early 80s. There was a tornado in the west part of town I remember - Lakewood area near the old amusement park that's now gone. And those incredible huge hot winds that ran along the front range...something else.

 

There was an earthquake, too!

 

Man, I miss the mountains.

 

M Peasley

[Blue Strat]

Originally posted by TheFunkman:

2) There's something uniquely terrifying about being RIGHT UNDER a lightning strike. It's not the usual "flash-BOOM." First, you're so close that you don't get the lightning's flash to warn you anything is coming. What you get is a blinding flash, combined with an intense, spine-rattling 120dB CRACKLE, all happening simultaneously.

Been there, done that. I was at Kure Beach on the NC outer banks one year with my parents and the hotel we were in was right on the beach, and a big thunderstorm came up. Lightning struck the building, blowing a chunk of cinder-block off of the corner of the building and into the pool. We had those heavy hotel curtains pulled to, but there was still the bright flash. It woke all of us up. The next morning, as we were going down the stairs, I noticed that the phone wire all around the outside of the building was melted.

 

Lightning is some amazing stuff.

[henrysb3]

A couple of weeks ago, we got baseball sized hail, but not in the quantities you guys had it. We just got the adjuster's report - almost $15,000. There are things you don't notice at first. I'm kind of laid up, so there wasn't much of a garden to destroy, but the trees and perennials took it hard. Nearly every vehicle parked outside in our neighborhood lost windows and/or windshields. Their horizontal surfaces look like phase-reversed acne.

 

Is Thor angry? Some birds were apparantly knocked out of the trees and into oblivion. I didn't find any around our house, but the neighbor behind us did. Glad your cats could get under shelter.

 

Henry

[Super 8]

Originally posted by offramp:

The sky directly above the lake was solid green. And it wasn't a happy shade.

I know that green. Last July 4th, we had a storm roll through here like I have never seen.

 

The wind was unbelievable! Hurricane force!

 

The sky was absolutely electric, and had a greenish hue to it. Very bizarre. It woke me up around 2am, and I opened my front door and watched it. I probably should have taken the family to the basement, but I wasn't really thinking. No tornados however. It did take out the power in many parts of the city for days! We were out for two days, but some had it much worse.

 

Didn't get any hail that I recall. Man! I wonder what it's like to be outside in a hail storm like that? I wonder if it would be like being stoned to death or something...