but you wouldn’t believe it from these pictures i just took in my back yard

when one of my workmates said it was snowing this afternoon, i was so incredulous i didn’t even go to the window. but on the bus home, i saw a number of cars covered in something that did indeed appear to be snow. and when i got to queenstown road, the pavements were covered with the stuff.

on closer inspection i saw that it was in fact hail – a much less disturbing explanation. it was pretty bloody big hail though, as you can see from the bottom picture, and it looks like there was a hell of a lot of it. i’m pretty glad i wasn’t outside at the time

the hailstones range between nurofen size and M&M size. there was a pretty thick slab of the stuff on the deck, so much so that i had quite a lot of trouble getting the back door open. you can see from the pictures how much hail i had to shove aside in order to get out.

unfortunately some of my plants have taken rather a beating from all this. the tomato has lost a lot of branches, the lavender has developed an even worse lean than usual, and i’ve found shreds of mint up to 2m away from the mint patch. oh and the strawberries are pretty much buried. it will be interesting to see what surivives after this much abuse.

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