Hail-zard

How is your spring?

Mine has been fairly nice, but at the moment I can barely move, body totaLLy eXhausted, sore. I know eXactly how a marathoner feels at mile 27, but a marathon is only 26.2 miles long.

Air conditioners don't fix themselves, well, at least not usuaLLy. Death comes in the form of shorts and longs. Pain is multi-dimensional.

But weather, the weather in my burg has been nice, a rainy spring, so much unlike last year. And the winter was mild, no blizzards, no long periods of freezing weather. Only the smaLLest of snowmen were constructed, certainly no personal backyard glaciers, my favorite.

On Wednesday I took a trip for critical supplies about hour west and south. At least four vehicles appeared to have slid off the road, judging by tire tracks and the positions of the abandoned vehicles. I had briefly heard the storm was bad in this area but this is April. Sliding off the road?

Bold Discovery: there were bergs near our burg

Also, as a side issue the number of emperor penguins appears to be much larger than previously known. Source: WSJ

During the evening news I learned that about 50 miles west of our town they received four feet of hail. No, that's not a typo! Not four inches of hail but four feet! When I was watching the news, the yesterday's local weather was the main news story. There was a picture of a man standing beside hail that came up to his chest. And I know that photos can be doctored, but then they showed video footage of the same man in the same location. They had several pieces of heavy equipment out clearing the hail off the roads. Four feet is 48 inches, and I have eXerienced at least one rain several years ago that dumped 8 inches in an hour's time period, but that is SIX times as much water! Our typical average ANNUAL preciption total is close to 20 inches, that's 20 inches in 365 days. Big difference.

So maybe it is time to clean out our storm shelter soon. Monsoon season is here. All of last year's missing rain showed up in one day as an ice cube. I don't need more ice, my new frig dispenses it right in the door, crushed or cubed.