Hail in Georgia

Wow! We had quite the hail storm last night. My husband was working in Cartersville, Georgia & he called me to let me know they had sirens going off. He is a photographer & shoots church directories, so they were headed to the basement of the church. We live only 10 miles from Cartersville so I turned on the local news to see what was going on.

My husband called back later to let me know he was OK & that he had collected some hail for us & would bring it home with him. He called later to let me know that they had cancelled the shoot for the rest of the night & he was on his way home. By that time we had received tornado warnings & I told him we were headed to the basement.

My 10 year old son & I went down & huddled under some sofa cushions we had taken with us & then I started hearing the hail hit. I got up & peeked around the wall & I could see the hail through the upper windows of our garage door. I always park my van outside in the driveway & I could see the hail bouncing off the top of it.

As I watched the hail went from dime size to golf ball size in just a matter of seconds. I went back to my safe spot at that point because it sounded like the whole house was going to cave in. Even though we had two floors above us it sounded like the hail was hitting on the roof right over our heads. It also sounded like it was hitting every outside wall of the house...it was very loud! I was afraid at that point that the tornado would be close...they had actually reported one being on the ground just west of us coming our way.

Fortunately the hail did not last long & within a few minutes I was able to stick my head out the garage door to take a peek outside. My whole yard was covered in hail stones so I grabbed my camera & took some photos (from the door...did not want to venture outside yet).

My husband arrived home about 5 minutes with his hail stones in hand. We laughed because he thought he was going to bring home the tale of the day...his hail was about grape size, pretty good but ours took the prize!

We were still on weather alerts & I happened to be looking out my front door when a cloud startled me. I called my husband & he determined it was a funnel starting to develop. It got bigger & started dropping down, I wasn't afraid because it was going away from us so it was quite fascinating. My husband ran to get the camera but by the time he got back it had dissipated. So all in all we had an adventurous night!

(It is hard to see the hail in the yard photos because I did not want to go outside, but all the white spots are hail.)