Hail

Dustbury's tale about the hail storm in OKC yesterday put me in mind of a hail storm in Austin when I lived there. Like the one yesterday in OKC, it was short and intense with golf ball size hail. The biggest impact was to automobiles. I had a Corvette at the time and it came through it unscathed, fiberglass body, you know. Our Ford Fairmont didn't do so well. It got dinged up enough that the insurance company cut us a fat check, but no so bad that we couldn't live with it.

The big show was when we went to the drive-in claim office. Zillions of battered cars there. I remember seeing one Z car that looked like it had been worked over by a crew with sledge hammers. The hood was so battered that the edges had become wavy and no longer mated with the rest of the body. The glass T-tops and windshield were totally cracked. I imagine that getting caught in the open in a storm like that could be fatal.