Awesome Beauty & Destruction

Wednesday night, July 8, 2009 I stepped out on my front porch to check on something and noticed the beautiful cloud to the north. I went back inside and got my camera to take the following shots...
...walking out in my yard to see the rest of the cloud I see this to the west...

...Fluffy white clouds on top with the brilliant orange from the sunset...

...the south end of the west cloud had straighter lines...

...in the darker blue/gray area on the horizon, lightening was visible...

...click on any of the pictures to get a larger view.

After taking the pictures I go back into the house to look at them on the computer. While sitting there I see the radar screen on one of the TV stations with the weatherman interrupting the scheduled programing. I turn up the volume and hear that Wichita is getting pelted with huge hailstones. These were coming from this beautiful cloud that I was taking pictures of...

July Hail Storm Slams South-Central KS

A summer thunderstorm slammed south-central Kansas on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Here are some of the more spectacular hail reports...

9:29 p.m. -- baseball-sized hail reported two miles southwest of downtown Wichita; car damage.

9:30 p.m. -- baseball-sized hail reported in downtown Wichita; damage to many vehicles at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, where a crowd of more than 4,000 people was attending the Wichita Wingnuts baseball game; windows broken out; hail fell for about a half hour.

10:10 p.m. -- tennis ball-sized hail reported two miles east-southeast of downtown Wichita, near the College Hill neighborhood.

See complete article here.

June 15th Ballgame & Storm

Tonight was another grandson ballgame. We have been have rainstorms quite a bit lately and today was again overcast. The boys started out with their warm up...
Grandson at his outfield position...

...chasing after a grounder that got by him.

Here he is getting the batting helmet on getting ready to bat.

He's still swinging high and fast. Still needing more practice.

A good attentive stance in the outfield.

You'll have to click on this one to see him clearly, he's throwing a ball back in to the pitcher. The scoreboard is in the lower right hand corner and shows a score of 2 to 6 with home being 2. Also note the corner of my umbrella in the picture and the field lights being on. We had intermittent sprinkles up to sometime in the 4th or 5th inning. Then the wind picked up a bit and lightening was getting closer.

I loaded my chairs and things up in my carrier and headed off home. The game was called, I not sure what the score was. Shortly after I arrived home the wind really picked up. I open the inside front door thinking I was going to go move my porch plants closer to the house. The wind and rain hitting the storm door was like a power washer. The way the glass was moving from the pressure of the wind and rain scared me so I closed the inner door and hoped my plants would do well. After the wind died down I went and checked on things and found a cooler had blown from the porch into the back lawn. Some of the soffit siding had blown down and my griddle for my grill had blown from on top of the porch frig clear out to the edge of my garden. It had blown over or past the pool, it's deck and the shower house to land at the edge of a zucchini start. Later another storm blew in and we had a brief bout of hail....

It didn't last long at all but we got quite a bit of rain. Can you see the water in my driveway? That's where they've been tossing my newspaper.

Check out the water coming off my roof. I have a rock garden where this water comes down.

Well, I've only had to water my newly planted garden once. Now I just hope it doesn't get flooded out.