Hail Nature And Be Hailed!!!

Recently I’ve mentioned how different parts of Canada have received some unusual and unseasonal weather. About five days ago, Calgary had been blasted with another winter storm with temperatures that plummeted while the snow escalated. I’m wondering if it was that cold air mass that brought the wicked hail storm to London, yesterday afternoon.

For the last week or so, we’ve been enjoying a lot – I should actually say A LOT – of sunshine and blue skies, here in London, Ontario. We’ve had so much sun and so little rain that some of my bushes were beginning to shrivel and patches of my lawn were turning brown.

Yesterday was the same. The weather forecast was calling for some rain with some possible thunderstorms for the afternoon.

It was 2:00pm and I was enroute to my high school to pick up the students when the sky turned from clear blue to white huge clouds then dark and black clouds – in a matter of minutes. It started to rain. A few seconds had passed and the sky started to change colours again, only this time I was seeing greens and orangey yellows scattered across the sky. Then it started to hail! Oh my! Did it hail! My bus was filled with all the echoes of these rather large bullets of frozen rain – I couldn’t hear anything else.

This storm last for about fifteen minutes and then the skies began to clear… for a few minutes. I finished my route and returned home for half an hour and I couldn’t believe what I saw.


The roads had turned green. The hail was so furious that it had ripped thousands of leaves off of all the trees. I grew concerned as I neared my home.


Parts of my lawn were still covered in small piles of hail and then I started to inspect my plants and flowers to see what had survived.


Twenty minutes ago, these hostas filled this space with their strong green leaves. Now, they had been reduced to a mess of slaughtered leaves and broken stems.


Hostas have very strong leaves, so it was quite a surprise to see the amount of damage that this storm caused.


My inspection took me into my back gardens and my eyes widened in disbelief. Boy – I thought that the Maple tree keys had been a problem! Now my lawn was covered – or I should say COVERED – in ripped and torn leaves.



I looked up into the tree and it looked almost naked! I would guess that over half of all the leaves had been torn from this tree. Usually when I look up into this tree I can’t see the sky. Now, I can see the sky quite clearly.


All of my flower gardens look like an ugly monster tromped through them before dumping bags of leaves on them. It’s going to be quite a chore cleaning up after this fifteen minute storm.


A few of my bean plants were destroyed, but I should still get a healthy crop. Most of the seedlings are still in the process of breaking through the soil, so I was glad for that. But my tomato plants!!!! Will they bounce back?


And my Marigolds, my beautiful yellow and red Marigolds!!!! It was enough to make me want to cry! I shook my head and thought about how out of ‘our’ control Mother Nature really is.

I think that it’s moments like these that help us put our relationship with the Earth into its proper perspective!

Jim