Torrential Hail Storm

We had a really vicious storm hit us Friday night. It came on so fast even we 'clever' humans got caught in it.  Beautiful, towering clouds circled us all afternoon ... then in rolled a big dust storm.  The dust storm was a warning, one that we didn't heed, as what kicked up all that dust turned out to be quarter-sized hail.

The hail hit our immediate area incredibly hard.  Along with the two inches of rain, there must have been at least two inches of hail that pelted everything to smithereens.  All the foliage was knocked off the plants.  Immediately around our house, we lost about 80-90% of all the vegetation.

The rain and hail caused a massive flash flood, the worst we have ever seen since we first arrived here 3 years ago.  The flooding washed so much soil and vegetation away.  Lake Ament Road is impassible without a truck or SUV.  The road to Gigabytes Cabin 2.0 is completely impassable, as a deep rock gully has opened up across the road.  So that project is on hold for a while...

I'm sure there were a lot of critters killed in the sudden storm.  The dogs found two flattened mice bodies.  Almost as flat as paper.

The hail broke all the east windows in the Cafe Colando. It also killed much of the gardens, including Sprocket's agave.

After all is said and done, we pulled through just fine.  None of our animals were hurt, and only some minor damage was incurred on a couple of buildings.  The roads are very bad, though, and we have a lot of clean up to do.

Temporarily stranded.

We expect to hear the frogs soon!

Hidden Lake overflows through this waterfall.

Feels like we've been moving mountains for days now.

Several panes of glass were shattered by the horizontal hail.

Guess it's time to buy a new rain gauge!

All grass and vegetation is washed away.

Bobcat rode out the storm and flood at the bottom of the creek.

She ended up pulling herself out of the creek pretty easily.