Only on TV. Any damage? You OK?

It was pretty loud, and my girlfriend's truck is "dimpled", but I'm okay. Everyone was out on their porches, going "woooo!" while it was happening.

That's not giant hail, thi... Oh wait. Actually that is giant hail.

Round here the TV refers to hail using the Sporting Goods Standard. That looks like "hail the size of golf balls". I've heard of "hail the size of cricket balls" before, but the biggest I've seen is a lot smaller than that.

(You're in Kansas? Hang onto something solid or you could be headed out Jimbob's way).

Throw some in the freezer for super classy cocktails. Mine melted during the blackout, I'd had it for 5 years or so.

That's scary huge!

I think the Sporting Goods Standard is the universal measure for hail.

I think the Sporting Goods Standard is the universal measure for hail.

Yeah, but what's this? It's bigger than "golf ball", but smaller than "baseball". We settled on "egg-sized", but couldn't think of any appropriate sporting goods.

Meh, that's small stuff. We had a hailstorm here last year that had hail the size of housebricks (close to American Football sized according to the Sporting Goods Standard, I guess). Big, sharp, lumpy hard clumps of ice - none of that soft white stuff like in your photo - these were as clear as glass and almost as hard. Our house had 65 broken (concrete) roof tiles, four broken windows, a destroyed garage door, compeltely trashed gardens and a (uninsured) car that looks like it has been used for golf target practice (plus a smashed rear air deflector and two smashed windows). Some of the cars that were in the same car park had to be towed away, they were so badly damaged.

When I took the car in for a new windscreen and side window, that company alone had 5,000 cars booked in for new glass and they were running shifts 24/7 to try and get through them. After seven months, the local panelbeaters still have not cleared the back-log of insurance repairs.

My boat has about 10 holes through the deck and a number of patches of paint shattered off where the fibreglass cowling is thin. On the sponsons, the ply is thin, but the centre parts of the deck are 6mm marine plywood and the hail just went straight through.

There were reports of a number of injuries to people who were caught out in the open - nothing too serious, but some severe bruising. Six minutes it lasted. Seven months later, the evidence is still around.

All in all, I laugh in the face of your puny hail.

Woah. That's pretty sinister.

Tennis ball?

I believe the SGS can sometimes be augmented with the CHA (Citrus to Hail Algorithm) when added precision is required. I've been trying to work it out but now I keep alternating between imagining you with giant hands and then tiny hands. (One of them has to be lime sized though, but I don't know whether Tahitian or Key).

I'm glad you're ok, but that's a bummer about your girlfriend's truck. Did you get any photos of the sky?

On preview: *makes mental note to stay away from wherever dg lives*

*Suddenly gets paranoid feeling that he's already living where dg does!*

I remember a hailstorm when I was a kid in northern Colorado (where we walked uphill, both ways, in a year-round blizzard to school) where the hailstones topped out at just under baseball-sized. We kept a couple in the freezer for years.

No sky photos, Gecko; it was just dark and rainy out there, with occasional lightning.

This fell all around about an hour ago. Anyone seen hail this big before?

Seen softball sized hail. Several times. Fun in a car.

I remember "hail sales" advertised by car dealerships from when I went to school in the Midwest. Their insurance would cover some of the damage to new cars parked in their lots and dinged by hailstones. Then they'd "pass the savings on to YOU!!!"

The biggest hailstones I actually saw myself were only walnut-sized, tiny in comparison to golfballs and limes and tennisballs and softballs and bricks. They'd still hurt like hell when they'd hit you in the head though.

I was just thinking it'd really smart to get bonked with those, much less softball ones or the jumbos dg talked about. Ow. Biggest I've ever seen were automatic ice cube maker size, which is teeny compared to these.

I had the great idea, as the last hail storm approached, of moving our cars to the nearest public garage, about 1/2 mile away.

Worked great for the first car. Parked, and started running home, to pick up the second. Bad, bad idea. I was running through a hailstorm, with severe lightning, with an umbrella over my head. The umbrella was getting ripped, the stones were bouncing off the ground and back up at me, and lightning was striking all over.

As I approached the house the hail was bouncing off of the roof and shooting at me sideways.

Fucking car can just take care of itself.

Some years back I was working as an office temp for an engineering firm. Very, very uptight place - you know, everyone dressed up, had to punch a clock to take a cigarette break, ick. We had a hailstorm one day - I think this was the golfball variety, or even possibly the marbles kind - and every engineer in the building went dashing outdoors with tape measures and slide rules and all kinda mysterious engineer doo dads to measure the hail and exclaim over it. It was cute, all these guys in suits, happy as clams in the hail.

How funny mgl! Every day should be like that for them!

Clams In The Hail is the name of my new mollusk comedy troupe.

Holy cow, 'bang. Biggest hail I've seen is about walnut sized.