Yesterday was hot and humid, the kind of day where you feel every crumb on the kitchen floor and your shirt sticks to your back and shoulders in damp wrinkles. Then the thunderstorms rolled through and cleared the air out, leaving us with rainbows:

And we thought that was the end of it.

Until more storms rolled through after dark. And they were loud, with thunder and lightning near constant. One cat bolted under the bed, the other went under the sofa and the small person in the house shot out of her bed and into parental arms while the rain poured down and the lightning made neon punches in the sky. “It’s ok,” we said, “just a big old thunderstorm. It’ll be over soon.”

And then it began to hail.

All I had on me was my cellphone. I wasn’t about to open the sliding glass door to get a better picture or go grab my camera from the study because suddenly it was incredibly loud and the grill was skating across my deck like it was a dandelion on a lazy summer breeze and I looked up at the skylights and thought, it’s time to get away from those because I have no idea if they will hold.

It was over in about ten minutes. The hail was mostly chickpea-sized, though there were more than a few golf-balls on my deck.

This morning, I discovered that we need a new dryer vent:

Our louvered vent on the side of the house had been completely sheared off by the hail. My neighbor’s new flower garden was decimated. Clumps of hail are still in pockets on the ground; I grabbed a chunk to bring onto the front step for closer inspection:

Saddest of all was the baby bird I found under a tree by my study window.

Friends in the harbor tell me they didn’t get any hail at all.

I could do with a little less excitement tonight, thanks.