We had some really strange weather here today.  Now, to understand the significance of what happened, I have to include a little background info (oh, no, groans the crowd! lol)…I’ve lived in Vancouver for a little over 5 years.  In that time, I can recall perhaps 3 times where we’ve had thunder and/or lightning accompany the rain.

Today, the sky got really dark all of a sudden and it was pretty clear something was about to come down!  Then, sure enough, it started raining really hard -another thing it doesn’t typically do here…usually, it’s more of an annoying heavy drizzle.  Then, the thunder started rolling and all the animals in the house were totally freaked out.  Given the infrequency of such events, they weren’t sure what to think, but they knew they didn’t like it. 

The sound of the rain got louder and louder and then I realized (from the sound of little balls of ice bouncing off the windows) that it was actually hailing.  The last time we had one of those strange heavy rain/thunder storms, it hailed, too, so perhaps that’s how it goes here…The hail pellets were about the size of those little dippin-dots ice cream thingies and, when all was said and done, the grass outside looked like it had been snowing, as it was mostly covered in a layer of hail.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, it stopped, the clouds cleared up and it was like it had never happened. Since the weather is still pretty warm, the blanket of hail on the grass didn’t last long and there were only pools of water left on the sidewalk after a short while.

All in all, a strange little episode of weather and something to blog about, I guess.