North Texas Storms

Monday evening we experienced the worst thunderstorm I've seen in the twenty years I've been in Texas. The edge of the storm hit here, but winds were near 80mph with golf ball sized hail that was driven sideways from the wind. They punched several holes in the vinyl fence panels, and sounded like they were going to come through the roof windows.

Those in the middle of the cell got softball size hailstones that actually penetrated house roofs and literally destroyed cars sitting outside. Where they hit the ground, the craters left after the ice melted looked like the surface of the moon!

I'm sure the fly-by-night roof repair companies will soon be prowling the neighborhood. The last time we had damaging hail, they began calling even before the storm had stopped. This time the storm area is so large they will have thousands of homes to contact.

One thing I noticed after the storm was how much better built the old cars were. When the wind and rain abated,  I checked my old '56 Plymouth parts car to see if the windshield survived, as I had planned to put it in the car I'm restoring. The glass was fine, and not single dent in the heavy sheet metal! Newer cars would not have survived the beating without major damage.