For those of you who live on the west coast, do you remember when the weather stayed fairly normal? Oh yes, we did have winter where you wore a sweater or jacket to the high school football games, but you could attend the game fairly certain that you were going to stay dry. And you had a drawer full of shorts, tank tops and tennis shoes in the closet. The weather cooperated with us. We even had two drive-in theaters where I grew up, and if you had a pickup truck, you could sit on lawn chairs in the bed of the truck on warm nights and enjoy the movie. But it seems that’s all changing. Now days it’s kind of a guessing game. The weather has been changing quickly, on a moment’s notice---something like what we Californians used to joke about Arizona. “If you don’t like the weather this morning, wait awhile. It’ll change.”
I took my dog Molly for a walk yesterday to the local park. It was around 4:00 pm. It had rained a little in the morning, but nothing to get excited about. At that moment there were some dark clouds hanging around, but the sun was shining and we seemed to have plenty of time. We got to the park and Molly immediately began sniffing the lamp post and fire hydrant. About then, I heard a strange noise of something hitting the street. It wasn’t rain, for I knew that sound pretty well. It took a few seconds to realize it was starting to hail. Yes, there was still some sunshine, but it was starting to really come down. That’s when the dog decided she didn’t like getting hailed on at all. She took off toward the house with me in tow.
About then I heard a different sound. I was wearing my straw cowboy hat you see in most of my photographs. In case you’ve never gotten caught in a hailstorm wearing a tightly-woven straw hat…it does have its own sound. The hail wasn’t large enough to hurt either of us or the hat, but it did get rather noisy inside the hat. One of my neighbors thought I was nuts and told me so as I passed his house.
Today the sun has been shining most of the day, although the prediction is for more rain on the weekend. That's okay.…as long as I can duck back inside the house if the rain turns to hail.