Hail Damage

Last Wednesday, March 25, the Austin area had a significant hailstorm. Hailstones of up to baseball size were reported and well documented. The area in which my daughter lives was among the hardest hit. This weekend, five days after the storm, there are insurance adjusters prowling all around the area, and you can see many parked cars with tarps over their broken windscreens and windows, plywood nailed over broken house windows, and other damage. This photo shows the damage to the plastic rain gutter on the condo next to my daughter's. These many holes are just about the size of a golf ball.

I wasn't planning on using this as a blip, but when I saw Jersey Bean's blip here yesterday, I thought it'd be apropos.

Interestingly, March 25th is a bad day for hailstorms in the Austin area. A hailstorm on 3/25/1993 caused $125 million in damage, another on 3/25/2005 caused $100 million in damage, and though final figures aren't in for last week's storm, it is expected to top these figures. Each of these three March 25th storms have followed a nearly identical track. Some of the topography in our area has an interesting effect on weather. The Balcones Escarpment, the easterly terminus of which basically parallels Interstate 35, often marks the conclusion of severe weather and squall lines moving in from the west, for instance.