| I
can't remember a September in Wisconsin being as active as this years
was. There were severe storms every week this month with tons of
hail reports. When the final day of the month came, I certainly wasn't
expecting too much weather-wise. I remember my Dad picking me up
from the school bus stop and racing home to beat a storm that we could
see was closing in from the NW. Just as we pulled into the driveway,
a CG hit almost right on top of us forcing us to dash inside. Instinctively,
I grabbed my camera and went to the garage door to watch this storm.
My Dad was interested too and even more so when he heard a distant roar.
I could only describe it as a waterfall sound that fervently grew louder
with each passing second. We thought it was just heavy rain hitting
the brittle corn field to our NW, but as we would soon discover it was
hail and almost no rain!
It wasn't long before we saw leaves falling from the sky mixed with nickel size hail. At one time during this drama, I stepped too far
outside the door for a picture and was punished by a hailstone landing
on my cheap Polaroid camera! The hailstones grew steadily in size up to golfballs before the whole event ended not more than a few minutes later; though for some reason it seemed much longer at the time.
After checking the local weather, I discovered this Cb was racing along
to the ESE at 50 mph just north of a strong warm front and ended up in
Lake Michigan about an hour later. These hailstones remained on the
ground well through the evening hours thanks to temperatures only in the
upper 40s. On a side note, several hundred Canadian Geese were found
dead at the Horicon Marsh and vicinity after this hailstorm. |
