Hail in July

Nothing quite like coming home exhausted after a long night at work, realizing it's the weekend so you can sleep in, and snuggling into bed...only to wake up a few hours later to hear the weather alert sirens going off.

It took a minute for my sleep-fogged brain to figure out that it wasn't the normal siren testing day, so I should probably figure out why it was going off. Turning on my computer, I woke up real fast when "Tornado Warning" popped up on my screen, next to a map with a big red danger area, with my place right in the target zone.

My parents' place out in the country was well out of danger, but by that time I was already hearing hail hitting the house hard. (Yay, alliteration!) I decided that if I was going to encounter a tornado, I'd rather do it in my nice cozy small-windowed basement than in my little featherweight Prius.

Of all the fun things I've done, sitting in a small enclosed space listening to pelting precipitation and wondering if the roof was going to fly away is definitely not one. Fortunately, after about ten minutes, I found a distraction. Water was trickling in around the edges of the front door.

There must have been a lot of water outside in the stairwell. The pressure built up fast, until there was a jet of water shooting a foot into the room from the crack between the door and the jamb. While I was watching my shoe floating gently away, the landlord knocked on the door to let me know there was several feet of water outside, and I should probably get out NOW.

The water pressure from outside was bad enough that I could barely open the door, which in retrospect was possibly not the wisest choice, since all that water promptly rushed in. What had been a puddle a couple inches deep in the living room now covered most of the apartment. At this point, the cat decided she wasn't having fun anymore and retreated to one of the remaining dry spots.

She was even less pleased when the landlord brought in a pump to start getting rid of the water. By this time, the storm had mostly died down, so I was able to go outside and see the damage.

There were white drifts of hailstones everywhere there wasn't standing water. The waterline was well above the curb in spots - naturally, one of them right next to my car. At least the doors were above water, albeit just barely, so I was able to get in.

By now, the landlord had managed to get out the standing water, though the carpet was still soaked and covered with mud and leaves. While he worked on that, I rounded up the cat and headed out for dry ground.

Overall, it could have been a lot worse. The carpet may need to be replaced, but nothing important was damaged. I'm glad I decided to pack my car for a visit to my parents before going to bed. I'm glad my cat is used to spending time with her stepsibling at my brother's place, so she has a place to stay. And I'm glad my landlord is paranoid enough about water to make everything as close to watertight as possible, so even with that much water outside, the leaking was relatively minor.

So it goes.