It hailed! It hailed on Christmas Day. I was alone at home, my housemates having buggered off (bless ‘em) to their respective family homes, and lying down sprawled on the living room pullout couch, when there was the rough repeated thuds of small hailstones on our roof, and the plastic awning over our small deck. I was so excited. I jumped up (slid off) from the bed and ran to the kitchen, to the glass door that opened up into the backyard and watch the green green grass turn spotted white. The hailstones bounced like jumping beans off the wooden slats, the concrete squares, the metal barbecue, the summer-baked dirt. Big clumps of ice fell off the roof, as they melted into thin streams of water.
It hailed once during my childhood, that I can remember. It was the most exciting thing then, too. We were in the tropics where it would never ever snow, but here were missives of ice and cold and everything our weather was not, raining down from the sky. My parents were in Mecca on a pilgrimage, and our grandparents had come down from their perches in the North to look after us. My brother opened the door to have ice cubes land on his feet. My cousins and I ran to the back to watch as an old tree we had in the backyard succumb to the weather and fall with a magnificent crash. Or maybe I am remembering that from a thunderstorm. In any case my grandparents blamed these aberrations on the sinfulness of the city, and city living, and modern lives.
The windows were cool to the touch after the storm died down. My hands left frosted marks on the glass. The sky bled watercolour grey and white.
I always got so excited for hail storms in Malaysia. Such an abnormal occurance.
Every year after that first hailstorm I kept wishing another one would come, but I don’t think I’ve seen another one since (in Malaysia)!
i think it’s the sound that like the best.
Yes! The sound as they hit the wood is amazing!