Doozey of a Storm

Last Saturday evening we had some crazy storms in St. Louis. The skies darkened, the wind picked up and the rain started. The weather report on the news said that the storms in our county were getting severe and to take cover. Well, I can't get to the basement in my house since it's impossible for me to go down stairs, so I just offered a few prayers. Before long the rain was pelting the windows and it sounded like my house was in a car wash. It started hailing and the hail stones loudly bounced off the windows. My shade was down so I couldn't see the hail, but from the sound of it I could tell the stones were quite large. It hailed for about five minutes and I was grateful when it stopped.

The next day my mom took a look at our house in the daylight to see if our house had sustained any damage and she discovered that there were several holes in the siding on north-facing side of our house. My mom counted about 20 holes total, so all of the siding on that side of the house is going to need to be replaced. (Thank goodness for homeowner's insurance!) Here's a picture of one of the holes in the siding.

My sister Laura lives in Maryland Heights where they had baseball-sized hail. She lives in an apartment complex with no garages or overhead coverings and both her car and her husband's car sustained terrible damage. The damage was so bad that both of their cars are actually totaled. Bummer! I'm attaching pictures they took of the hail stones that varied in size from marble to golf ball to baseball-sized stones. I'm also attaching a video of her husband's car that really tells the whole story.

My mom heard on the news that there are between 40,000 and 50,000 cars in the St. Louis area that sustained hail damage. Thank goodness my mom's car wasn't damaged (which is kind of surprising since we had hail large enough to rip holes in our siding. I'm not complaining!).