Well, hail.

No, really.

It started out rain. Then looked like sleet, but it's been too warm for sleet, y'know? Then the next thing I knew it was hailing marbles and I would have sworn Santa's boys had got confused and were tapdancing on my roof.



Big marbles.



Really big marbles.

The first shot I took while it was still hailing -- crouched in the dubious shelter of the balcony half-wall, trying to fit as much of me as I could under my hat, and still getting nailed in the butt by FREAKING BIG HAILSTONES.

The second one? About twenty minutes after it stopped, once I'd had time to get the first set of shots off my camera. TWENTY MINUTES.

Holy cow.

Then this happened:





See, I'm from eastern Pennsylvania. We don't get tornadoes. So I was all like, wow, look at those swirling clouds, I wish I had a video camera. That siren? The fire sirens always go off during exciting storms.

...no, dummy, that's the tornado siren.

They don't have those where I come from.

...so yeah, anyway, it didn't actually turn into one, and even though I'm on the second floor and have no basement, I have a plan: grab the rat and head for the laundry room. It's halfway buried in the ground and well-protected and about as safe as I'm going to get. The cats are all in closets and under beds anyway, so they're on their own.

It's quiet now, and Tim has said that the birds are a better predictor of imminent excitement than anything else, so as long as they're still chirpy and happy I'm not worried.

In the meantime, one last photo. This one's for Tim.