Am I in Bramley or Texas? | Hail Storm

The sky darkened and suddenly I was reminded of our 3 years in Texas.  I looked at my wife and said, "I think there’s a storm a coming".  One of our friends was visiting and as we all looked out of the window, the first few hail stones began to drop.

Nothing ominous at first. In the last few weeks we’ve had a few hail/sleet showers, but looking at the sky you could tell this was going to be something a bit more substantial.

Sure enough, there was a crack of thunder immediately following by an increase in the size of the hail.  Now it was starting to remind us of Texas.  (Although I will add here, the hail today never approached the golf ball sized hail we once had in Fort Worth).

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Over the next few minutes the clouds darkened even further and the thunder/lightening intensified to probably the most active storm I’ve seen (heard) since moving to Bramley four years ago.  But, unlike Texas, I wasn’t looking for the "green" tint to the sky that signified the possibility of a tornado.

The hail stones started increasing in size to slight larger than a pea, but still way smaller than a marble. None the less, the noise was extremely loud and one of my dogs wasn’t enjoying it at all.

The storm probably lasted no more than 15minutes, but in that time over an inch of hail dropped out of the sky.  Amazingly for Bramley, the power stayed on the whole time despite the number of lightening strikes that sounded quite close by, and even more amazing was the fact my broadband didn’t drop once. (Usually it only takes a bird to fart whilst sitting atop the phone wire and it drops off-line).

What with the floods last year that came cascading off the fields behind the village hall, through my back garden, through the garage, washing the gravel nearly 200yards down the road. The snow last week, the hail today, the weather seems to be turning for the worst. And with a ‘typical British Summer’ forecast, it makes you wonder what that entails.