After a very hot day yesterday (top temperature of 37.9 deg C), the area of Adelaide that I live in got a pretty impressive hail storm late yesterday afternoon. I’d been working at home, and I heard the dogs start barking, then the rumble of the thunder. Of course, I went outside to have a look because I like watching storms.

The cloud formations were like nothing I’ve ever seen before, so after watching them for about a minute I decided to go back inside and get the digicam to get some photos.

When I got back outside, I took a few cloud photos, and I could hear this continous rumble, like thunder, or a heavy wind in the trees, but it just didn’t stop. After a couple of minutes the rumble seemed to get closer.

By the time it was about a street away I realised it was hail, and figured I’d better get under the verandah just in case. A few seconds later we had chunks of ice raining down on us.

Well, the hail was being blown in at an angle, and was landing about a metre in from the edge of the concrete, then bouncing once before it hit our back windows (which are “protected” but a verandah about 3-4 metres deep).

As you can see in the photos, some of the hail stones were the size of 20c pieces (an Ausiie 20c piece is about an inch across for anyone reading this who doesn’t know)! Afterwards it looked like we’d had snow on the lawn. Now, the roads around here are covered in leaves, gum nuts and crap which was litterally “stonned” out of the trees.

I’ve never seen anything like it, like I said, it was very impressive.