The Hail of It and Blog~a~versary

Friday morning Brutus the pup woke me up about 5:30'ish or so for his early a.m. feeding. It was drizzling when I turned the other dogs out the front door for their morning potty break and went about the inside morning routine. I checked the weather and noticed we were under a thunderstorm watch.

About the same time daylight was arriving so did the hail.

Adam is a heavy sleeper, hard to wake him most of the time. Though the hail brought him out of bed and questioning what the noise was.

I waited until the storm had passed then went out to take a few photos. Figured no one would believe me.

The white is the hail - in the front

Below is the door to the screened in porch on the back of the house. This is where we get most of the run off from the roof when it rains (the small white bucket collects rain water for watering house plants - it was filled from the storm). The hail had bounced, rolled and collected in the same area where the rain runs off.
Hopefully you can see the hail on the roof and at the base of the ramp (where the ramp begins)

Most pieces of hail were this size.

Shortly after the hail storm passed the more severe weather arrived. Thankfully we did not suffer any major damage. Only a few branches fell, a few plastic buckets and odds-n-ends were blown about the barn yard. During the last few minutes of the storms our electric went out. The electric was out for about 5 hours after the storms passed.

The "all clear" was given about 10:30. I went out to check on the livestock and finish up the morning routine. I went to the bottom pasture to feed, the sheep were not in their shelter. Of course I didn't think to carry the camera with me. I found the boys out happily browsing the high spots in the pasture totally unconcerned about the flash flooding, oblivious to the fact that the creek had jumped it banks, flooded the bottom pastures and flood waters were rushing not 50 feet from them. Luckily when they heard me yell "breakfast boys" they came running and I closed the flooded pasture off.

Standing on the back porch I could see and hear the flood waters gushing down the wet weather creek that is the boundary line of the back of our property. It was the highest it has ever been in the 12 years Jim has owned the property.

Later in the day after the electric came back on and the flood water retreated, the neighbors up and down our drive brought to my attention that the flood waters had taken out part of our access road and there was no way in or out. According to their reports one section of the road had been washed away and it could no longer be driven over without fear of driving off the side or the road caving in.

Knowing I could be of no help I call Matt (BIL) to come out to look things over. Turns out there really was some damage to the drive. A drain/culvert was clogged and the flood waters went over top of the road instead of under the road. The flood waters sheared about a foot off of a section of the road, a person could drive off the side down a steep drop if they did not pay attention to what they were doing. He highly doubted if the road would cave in, said it was still driveable just not with large machinery. He sunk a couple of T-posts as markers to show where the road side dropped off and what area to avoid. He thinks a few dump truck loads of dirt and gravel will fill it in and will have the road back to normal.

While he was here he saved me the task of walking the back of the property. He wanted to check out the creek area, he had never seen the water so high. On his walk about he discovered the flood water had also taken out most of our fencing on the back of the farm. Guess what we will be doing in the near future...more fencing.

Can you believe that today is my 1st year Blog~a~versary? Sending a big Thank You to my followers and visitors. It means so much to see that you visit and read the blog.