After a meeting tonight at my Pierce office, the forecasted storm arrived. I'm glad that I was about to leave, seeing how the windows to my truck were down because of the earlier heat. No worries, so I was pretty happy and relaxed heading out of town.
So as I was driving down the highway, I was watching the storm (as best as I could with watching the road of course, and only seeing some clouds from lightning flashes), I came up to a group of motorcycles heading into Pierce. One of the bikes were close to the center line, which concerned me a bit with all of the traffic that was behind them, but about a quarter of a mile down the road, I ran into some hail that was near golfball-size. I decided to power on, seeing how ahead of me was a clear sky (so I must have been driving out of the storm, I was hoping), and it was a couple of miles before I was clear of the hail.
So what was it like for those motorcycles to drive through that hail? After all, this wasn't like the pea-size hail that rained down on Norfolk NE a few weeks ago... this was larger stuff, big enough to bounce off the road.
Granted, it looked like this wasn't "higher elevation" hail that is more solid. What didn't bounce would "explode" when it hit the ground or the truck. So maybe it wasn't near as bad as it could have been for these guys, but still - hail is hail, and a golf ball is bigger than a pea.
So now that I'm sitting in the comforts of my lazy-boy, watching the start of Leno, getting ready to head off to bed, I have to hope that these riders didn't have far to go, because looking at the weather radar, the only routes that they would of had to drive on will lead them into a worse storm cell.
So do you give thanks for what you have, or pray for those who are suffering?
Think about it.
