Hail, hail!

It's been a busy little day.

Coming back from a meeting in Cumbernauld this afternoon, I noticed the skies to the west and south getting more and more grey, menacingly so. Within minutes the view was transformed as hailstones blew across the road, swirling as they did so, settling on the road surface, only to be blown up in the air again to settle somewhere else a few metres away. It was like one of these desert sandstorms one sees in pictures, except that it was hailstones in this instance.

Thankfully, I was only a few hundred metres from home and, by the time I had parked the car, the wind had dropped and the hailstones were now battering down and bouncing of any surface into which they came into contact. This is the view from my car as I pondered whether to make a run for it or wait and see whether the storm would abate any.

A few minutes indoors and I had to get out again, but this time to catch a bus. The hailstorm had indeed abated, only to be followed a few minutes later by a brief flurry of snow. This seems to have been the weather pattern for most of the evening. The snow has been on and off, but not heavy enough to lie in any great quantities - at least where I live.