Ah hail......

Best friend calls me tonight.

His mother-in-law, who lives about 30 miles from here, got hammered.

With SOFTBALL-SIZED HAIL.

4.25 inch diameter.

You talk about fucking up a town.

 

Criminy, that's some big hail.
We had a storm here a couple years ago with baseball-sized hail. It was one of those nasty, sudden thunderstorms you get in late spring or early summer and it hit around 4 p.m. on a Sunday. Lots of people got caught out in it, including our county's sheriff. He was riding a motorcycle on the interstate at the time. He was OK, thank goodness, but a bit shaken up.
For about two months after the storm, dealerships were selling cars at a discount because of hail damage and insurance companies were running ads on how to make claims for hail damage. There was a waiting list at auto body shops, too.

 

Drive out there and lay on the ground with your feet in the air. Maybe the hail will knock off a corn or two.

 

It's Weather Channel-speak. At most it was maybe lacrosse ball-sized hail.

Know who has it worst after a major hail storm? Car dealers. Their inventory gets ruined, and even assuming they're insured, that has to take forever to repair.

 

There's a Nissan plant in my neck of the woods that has a little trick up its sleeve to deal with this sort of thing. They have these giant sonic cannons that shoot soundwaves into the thunderstorms. The idea is that the sonic booms from the cannons break up the hailstones.
Supposedly it works, but pisses off homeowners in the area.

 

Screw them. It's already hailing! How much noisier could sonic cannons be?

 

Really. Either they don't get the same benefit from the cannons as the plant does, or they're just fucking stupid. Hailstones hitting your house would probably make a pretty loud racket.

 

If the storm had used grey dot softballs, it wouldn't have been so bad.

 

Some stories I just read say they're about 50 decibels, and only when hail is present. Presumably, that's not a very long period of time, but they go off every four seconds.

Google it. Scientists say it doesn't do a damn bit of good, but farmers keep buying them up. Pretty interesting.

 

Well played.