Freak Storm

I like summer time in SW MT. It can get hot, but it's usually not miserable; and we don't get near the humidity that other parts of the country get. And most of the time evenings cool down nicely. And, actually, the weather here is relatively stable -- no hurricanes, tornadoes or nasty T-storms. We are surrounded by seasonal wildfires and, because we live close to a big-ass volcano, we also get the occasional earthquake.


The other thing I like about summer are the tourists in VC. I'm an introvert by nature and generally don't like being around lots of people. But I do enjoy playing tour guide at the church and watching people's reactions when I tell them we have an ASA of 15, or that we're the only church in town, or other some tidbit of small town information. I also like finding out where people are from -- CA, WI, TN, FL, Sweden, Germany, Scotland . . .

It always amazes me where people come from to visit VC.

Yesterday I had some people from down South, Tennessee I think, who were asking about the weather. I basically told them that this was a relatively tame place to live. Sure, we got snow, but not like Buffalo. It gets hot, but not like Houston or Tempe. And we get the occasional storm, but nothing like the tornadoes in the Midwest or the hurricanes in the Southeast.

And then Mrs. Ref called me.

"You might want to stay at work for a bit -- we are getting hit with a nasty storm."

Come to find out we had golf ball sized hail coming down and winds up to 80 mph. When I got home, the fire department was very busy, so I pulled my gear on and went to help. In short, trees down on cars and houses, hundreds of windows broken, power lines down, nursing home without power and siding that looks like it's been machine-gunned. The amazing thing is that there were no injuries from it all. I finally got home just after 10 and slept in until 7.

In short, after I extolled the virtues of our weather here, we got slammed with almost everything I said we never got. I'm now waiting for Yellowstone to erupt to make it a perfect sweep.

Luckily for us, we only have one broken window (and not all the way out), and both the church and parish hall escaped any damage. Today is clean up day around town.