Terrifying Grapefruit-Sized Balls of Hail Rained Down in North Texas This Weekend
I bet it was hail like this that made people start believing in a higher power. Imagine you're just a regular humble caveman. Everything in life is pretty straightforward. It's just you, your cave, your family, and your club that use to hunt small animals and defend yourselves from sabertooths. I guess there were probably bad cavemen you had to worry about too. I'm sure there was some inner cavemen drama. But nobody knew words yet. Even if you had thoughts about the universe, you didn't even have the tools at your disposal to formulate them. Overall it's a simple life. Every day is the pretty much the same. Except for the days when the sky tries to kill you. If you leave your cave one day and a giant ice rock comes screaming down from the sky and squashes your caveman baby's head like a watermelon, the only logical explanation is that something/someone bigger is attacking you. And you probably did something to piss him off, because why else would he do something like that? Naturally the main suspects are the sun and the moon, because they seem to be up in the direction where the bad things are coming from. So people started worshiping the sun and the moon. Yada, yada, yada. People formed languages. Then Jesus came along and convinced everyone that his dad is actually the guy who controls the sun and the moon. That's how Christianity was born. I'm no theologian, but I think I got that about right.
Hail is kinda the red headed step-child of the natural disaster family. You don't hear too much about it. Nobody ever expects it to show up. For the most part you kinda forget it exists. But every once in a while it comes out of nowhere and kills your family dog while it's outside taking a piss.
Actually, in the grand scheme of things, as far as natural disasters go, hail is kind of a bitch. At least in the United States. As in it's not really a threat to kill people. Different reports say different things, but according to Weather Underground, only 3 people have been killed by hail in modern U.S. history.
In spite of the enormous crop and property damage that hailstorms cause, only three people are known to have been killed by falling hailstones in modern U.S. history:
—a farmer caught in his field near Lubbock, Texas on May 13, 1930;
—a baby struck by large hail in Fort Collins, Colorado, on July 30, 1979;
—and a boater on Lake Worth, Texas, on March 29, 2000.
Some other websites have that number closer to 10. Regardless, hailstorms rarely result in death in America. Although if you go back in time, in 1888 in Northern India, a hailstorm once reportedly killed 230 people (and 1,600 goats). If you go way back in time, in 1490 Qingyang, China, a hailstorm took the lives of approximately 10,000 people. And in 1360 during the Hundred Years War in France, a hail storm killed 1,000 British soldiers on what's referred to as "Black Monday". So idk why hail has been taking a backseat to other natural disasters all these years, but clearly hail has got it in him. If the hail we got in Texas yesterday is hail re-announcing itself as a weather event to be feared… If this is hail having a moment, we might have problem on our hands.
I might finally be time for me to get my steel umbrella business off the ground. God forbid that Texas-sized hail ever teams up with tornadoes. Those are comically large balls of ice. Comically large balls of ice falling from the sky are always a nice reminder that the universe can kill us all in the blink of an eye whenever it feels like it. Or break all the windows of your home and cost you thousands of dollars in repairs, because for some reason hail damage is the one thing your insurance doesn't cover. Or ruin our lives in a million other different says. Fucking weather man. Stay safe out there. Especially if you're in Texas, because it seems as if the hail storms might not be finished.