Midnight Hail Storm

It's right at 11pm. A cold front moved through the area a bit earlier producing various storms along it's SW to NW front. I'm sitting here monitoring the NWS seeking hail reports from the Grapevine area and listening to two or three radio operators reporting from their home locations. A couple more cells have moved into southern Tarrant County and one is headed more or less in my direction. Nothing severe at this point. Tomorrow is forecast for moderate risk of severe storms. NWS is just issuing a severe thurnderstorm warning for that storm moving in my direction, small hail and winds to 60mph. Guess I'm going to be up a while. The NWS notifies radio operators either the same time or a few seconds before the information is sent to radio and television broadcasters around the area. So far my NBC5I warning link hasn't popped up with that severe alert. If this were to develop very quicky and get pretty bad I'd receive a call from the EOC advising me to activate - in other words get my tail down there ASAP.

I went to meet with Gene and Greg this evening at the EOC to discuss the status of the Event Log, and to familiarize Greg with the data entry process. The entry itself is pretty straight forward, but it's the know what needs to be entered and what can be left out that's important, and entering all those still unfamiliar call signs that slows me down on occasion. When the Radio Room is completed, I'll be seated between 2 radio operators typing in info pretty much real time. When I first arrived, early for a change, I walked into a room with several police officers - which I had not anticipated. They were using the EOC as Operations command to oversee Opening Day for the Texas Rangers. At the time they were monitoring traffic leaving the stadium. A bit later it was checking to make sure all the tailgaters had left the premises, and handling reports of a fight and drunks in one of the parking lots. They deployed what I'd call a modern version of a paddy wagon in case of mass arrests (something th ... Ha, the computer alert just sounded - that took about 5 minutes to come up.) The police were trying to avoid mass arrests, but just in case ... Between 6 Flags security, Stadium security and several squad cars with flashing lights the remaining partiers moved home without incident, more or less.

I'm hearing a increasing rumble of the approacing storm and will go watch to see if I get any hail. I hear hail on the roof! -------- Well, that was a bit of a wild ride starting with torential rains with pea-sized hail coming down in sheets, followed by 1-1/4" hail just to wrap up the show. The flowers I just planted over the weeked are shredded.

All the hail in the bowl is a couple of handfuls I scooped up in a 6" square area. Note that the chunk beneath the quarter is half-again as big as it is.