What the HAIL?

I didn’t sleep last night. At all. I don’t know why.

I went to sleep around 10:30 am. Ah.

The weather forecast said, partially cloudy with some wind.

The actual weather said, “Au contraire!”

I awoke to Chloe (completely uncharacteristically) diving onto my chest. And then a tremendous racket…like machine gun fire. Loud. Long. Howling wind. Sincere cracks of thunder.

What?

I was still too sleep muddled to hit the floor. Instead I pulled back the drape, I suppose so I could identify the bullet that hit us.

Significant hail - probably nickel-sized, battered the windows, the cars, the roof.

Then the weather was finished with its “You’re not the boss of me, weather channel,’’and the temper tantrum of the elements was - for now anyway - done.

How can anyone NOT be humbled by weather events?

Like a bluff charge from a rhino, pointing out as it turns and trots away. “I didn’t, this time, but keep in mind that I CAN.”

DrWatson · 70-79, M Best Comment

From the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Five Orange Pips":

It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage