Believe it or Not hailstorm

Believe it or not, four feet of hail fell a hundred miles south of here last night, We were lucky to be at the tippy-top of the storm and only got some much-needed rain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...oses-highway/2012/04/12/gIQASX5hDT_story.html

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...texas-reports-photos-cause-quite-a-storm?lite

 

yep saw that on drudge... amazing, ...must have been one hell of a supercell!

 

Holy cow!!

 

That probably did some damage to paint..

 

pics from the NWS amarillo facebook page
apparently what looks like mounds of dirt is the hail drifts/washes covered in mud/dust..

..more
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ama/?n=apr11survey

 

Yeah it wasn't 4 feet of hail falling. It was 4 foot drifts as it washed down and piled up.

 

Weather on the Plains is a funny animal. One farmer can have his house blown away by a tornado, all of his crops destroyed by hail and what's left of his topsoil washed away by six inches of rain while the farmer on the next section will only get a light summer shower.

The way that the storms angle from southwest to northeast makes our county a dust bowl, whereas Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Wichita get massive downpours and lots of tornadoes. It's always amazed me how people built almost all of the major Plains cities in the worst weather areas. The original settlers coming west in their wagons must have said "Hey, look how green it is here! Let's build a city!" never thinking that maybe considerable rainfall on the Plains might equate to a stormy climate.

 

*Sigh* even dodging tornadoes and crazy hail, I miss Oklahoma spring. Dogwoods, redbuds, magnolias, and all the wildflowers. Nice weather and easy camping and all the green!