Oh, HAIL!!

 

The weather weasels were calling for cold, wind gusts to 45 mph, and generally crappy weather this evening and through the night.  About 7:45 pm, the first "WHAM!" of hail.  Yes, we know that sound all too well.  Poor Rufus freaked out.  Joan and I opened the covers on the skylite and the bathroom vent to see if the vent covers were getting busted and leaking... not yet.  It started coming down harder!  Fortunately, we were ahead of the game and had pulled in the bedroom slide (facing the direction the big wind was supposed to come).  I tried to scoop up Rufus, but he was running back and forth, terrified!  We turned on the porch light to see how big the hail was... hard to tell, with it coming out of the west nearly sideways.  Joan mouthed to me, "Nothing we can do about it."  It was loud - reminiscent of the hail in 2021 at Hart Ranch, but not as loud - we could still hear each other hollering.

Hail?  In Arizona?  Who knew?  I sure didn't.  When it let up,  I went outside with a flashlight.  The wind was still howling, a bit of rain that felt like needles, and cold.  Hail was piled up around the picnic table and on the windshield of the car.  I took a few photos, but the windshield didn't look broken and by the light of the flashlight, I didn't see any visible damage to the Equinox...

 Pea size and some larger.  Solid (not the mushy kind of hail).  It came howling out of the west southwest, so I went back to the cargo trailer and looked it over...

I didn't see anything new for hail damage (once again, by flashlight).  The e-bikes are under a cover on that side of the trailer, and I didn't see any obvious damage to the cover.  It's too cold and windy to stay out very long, so I'll be looking things over much closer in the daylight.

At 8:40 the wind is strong and gusty - strong enough to make the coach shudder as it blasts mostly from the side.

No visible damage to the skylites, so likely that the roof is OK.  But, as I said earlier, I'll be up and out at first light to look it over close.  In the meantime, my heart is beating a bit faster than normal (and I'm sure Rufus, too) as the rain continues to come down, along with the wind.  The streets in the RV park are concave (with the center being lower) and water is running fast down the middle.

We were ready for the wind and rain - sure didn't expect the hail.  In Arizona.  In February.  We've been coming here for over 2 decades... never seen anything like this before.

Sleep may be hard to come by tonight.  But, the power is on, the heat is running (it's in the mid-40s currently), and we are safe and dry.  This coach could use a break from Mother Nature, and the Equinox has heard the stories about the Honda getting beat to a pulp.