American in Spain

One Hail of a Storm

March 21, 2007

Winter came back this week. Quite violently. The newspapers and television are filled with stories like this one:

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My sources report snow in Mondragon. Down here where my apartment is at more than twice the altitude above sea level as the street below, we just get violent storms. Last night, there was a huge din as all hail broke loose (okay, that's the last one).

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Hail build-up outside our living room window.

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To provide the best blog content possible to my dear readers, I risked a severe pelting (pelleting?) and selflessly stuck my hand out the window to snap this blurry masterpiece of photojournalism.

I'm no forensic meteorological detective, but I estimate that about five years ago, there was a huge hail storm in Colindres with hail at least the size of golf balls. How do I know this? Well, about half of all cars that are more than five years old are covered in little golf-ball-sized dents. I'll have to take some pictures next time I'm walking around town. Perhaps José can comment on it.

I also took at minute-long video that was mostly a reflection of every light source in the living room, but about 37.2 seconds into it, I captured the following frame: lightning

Shocking, huh?

If this keeps up, we might have to turn the heating on again. It's been off for two months.