hail the stones.. not!

Last night, we had a storm spell that lasted well into the wee hour of the morning. Thunder roared in the far sky, bolts of lightning flashed at random, then followed by furious downpour soon after.. and then it started to rain lumps of ice (it didn't rain ice the whole night though). It was quite an experience to have that happening right under your roof. The sound of those hailstones hitting the roof was really deafening.. it felt like it's going to break right through the windows.. pretty unnerving. We were fortunate though not to have larger hailstones pelting down on us.. that would probably cause some serious damage to the roof and windows and not to mention the car too (but that would also depend on the hardness of the stones and the angle of the impact). Well that's what happened in other parts of France last night.. poor folks who have to deal with the aftermath of hail. The one we had last night produced ice pellets the size of cherry seeds to that of marbles.

Well last night wasn't my first experience with hail storms. We experienced one while on the road to my in-laws.. it was pretty scary driving in the middle of nowhere while hail was in progress and the thought of the possibility of facing golf-size hailstones (or bigger) really made me cringed.. and to think that driving on hard lumpy ice is like trying to drive on ball bearings. But so far, the storms I've experienced here were not that severe.. not that I'm wishing otherwise.

Well as the Malay proverb goes, "Hujan emas di negeri orang, hujan batu di negeri sendiri, lebih baik negeri sendiri".. meaning "Anywhere is always lesser than one's homeland, no matter how lacking it can be" (not that it has anything to do with the content of this entry).