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Snow-rocks (too large to be called hail!) fall in Madrid. In September!
Yesterday was a normal day; one of those summer-ending-autumn-starting type days. Although a little gloomy, it was still warm, I walked around in shorts and flip-flops. Then at night, to everyone's shock and scare, rocks of hail hammered the city. Yes, ROCKS. The picture here is from my balcony. I'm not exaggerating when I say that a lot of the hail falling was larger than walnuts. Imagine 10 people targeting your window at the same time with rocks, that's exactly how it felt. If anyone was walking on the road at the time, they would have been seriously injured.
Snow is not normal in Madrid. It does hailstorm occasionally, but the normal rice-like hail. Accompanied by severe thunder and lightning, this was like nothing I've seen before. Ever. And it's September for goodness sake! You can see some more photos here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
pontia Sep 10th 2008 9:11AM
Bizarre! Once, when I was living in Bologna, the day started out perfectly warm and sunny in June. In about 5 minutes the sun was covered by black clouds, and it started raining and hailing like crazy- to the point where even the porticos offered no protection. A fellow Bolognese was nice enough to let me wait out the storm in the lobby of his apartment, otherwise, it would have been brutal.
pontia Sep 10th 2008 9:14AM
Bizarre! Once, when I was living in Bologna, the day started out perfectly warm and sunny in June. In about 5 minutes the sun was covered by black clouds, and it started raining and hailing like crazy- to the point where even the porticos offered no protection. A fellow Bolognese was nice enough to let me wait out the storm in the lobby of his apartment, otherwise, it would have been brutal.
Grant Martin Sep 10th 2008 10:02AM
Is that a dead bird on your balcony, Abha?
Baron Sep 10th 2008 10:07AM
I think that still qualifies at hail. Back where I grew up, it would seem at least once a year we would get patches of hail that ranged from golf ball to baseball size. Every few years, we would get some softball sized storms. They were always spotty at best, but they could totally destroy the outside of a car or decimate several hundred acres of crops.
AJ Sep 10th 2008 11:05AM
Down here in Texas, golf ball size hail is not that unusual, and softball size hail even happens from time to time. Last spring, it was not unusual to see cars of all types in the Dallas area driving around with severely broken windows due to hail that in some neighborhoods exceeded 3" in diameter.
Abha Sep 10th 2008 2:44PM
Grant, it's alive I promise. I thought it would die last night, so pushed it under a table in the patio. Checked this morning and it wasn't there, so I'm thinking it flew away.
Jamie Rhein Sep 10th 2008 8:23PM
Those hail storms are alarming. There was one in Columbus two years ago--more than $3,000 damage to our car. Pockmarks
The roofing business had a booming business for awhile.
I'm glad the bird didn't get beaned and made it through to fly off into another day.