glad they missed me. wow. the radar showed strong storms just north of me. although we got some gentle rain.

Glad they missed us too. We didn't even get a drop of rain on Tuesday...did get a little rain yesterday but nothing damaging (thank goodness!).

Believe I saw the same video on the Weather Channel Tuesday evening...it looked quite nasty & I'm sure plenty of gardens really took a hit. Can't think of the name of the place right now...but, there's nice garden center in Exeter, NH. I imagine most of their stock was either seriously damaged or just plain ruined (at least for retail sale this year).

Plenty of calls about awnings. I'll bet they're too busy with claims for automotive damage and homeowner's damage... give it a few days.

I was watching the blackness to the south and listening to NHNPR and heard the tornado warning! The clouds swirled in, visibility plunged to about 25 yds. and the rain came down in buckets. Then it got very bright and another dark round rolled in. Amazing! no hail, though.

We had no hail but the rain has come down so hard both yesterday and today that my garden looks as if a steamroller went over it--and at the height of bloom. Everything is flattened. Very discouraging. I see the same thing as I drive around town too. But the people in the hail area certainly had it far worse. What a year!

Guess what, Peabody flooded again.

My across the street neighbors lost a window to hail. A hole in the side of his house to lightning, I lost part of my roof and 2 tv sets, two trees were blown apart by the lightning strike. I lost half my tomato's, the ones closest to being ripe of coarse.

I'm delighted that was ALL that happened. That was one, big, bad, storm.
Ron

The rains washed away a good portion of the mulch I put down 2 days before and lifted 2 of the trees. They were 6'arborvitate with small root balls. I'll fix them today. Also beat on my hydrangeas but they'll be okay. Could have been much worse.

Ron, I can't believe Peabody got that much damage again! I grew up in Ipswich which was 2nd to Peabody for damage last round of rains and floods. So sad to see your town go through that. Sorry about your damage!
Chris

I think the baseball size hail was an exageration unless it was a fluke in one area. More like golf ball size... lol

At the time, I was in Marblehead, where a tornado-like effect happened on Marblehead Neck. People there reported hearing a "freight train noise" typical of tornadow, and the top of a big oak tree was snapped off during that. While I didn't see the tornado, I do rememeber thinking that the sky was very unusual -- not like a typical thunderstorm. It was a gray-yellow, and in recollection, I've read that that's the color of a tornado sky.

I was listening to the radio, and the Emergency Broadcast System came on with a tornado warning for Essex County, noting that a funnel cloud was spotted in Topsfield moving toward Ipswich and Cape Ann. There was no mention of Marblehead. It was very still, then suddenly a violent downpour with walnut-sized hail and nearby intense lightning hit.

I drove home to Salem under a barrage of huge hail, but remarkably didn't see any damage to my pickup truck later (of course, it already has so many little dings and scrapes from doing work that no one would notice hail damage). The immediate area was heavily flooded, and I thought of some of our key local areas -- Canal and Jefferson Streets in Salem, and Foster Street in Peabody, which are always seriously compromised when we have a deluge.

After the worst passed, I was grateful to note that while some of my tall perennials were drooping and the sunflowers had big holes punched in their leaves by hail, my home and property had been spared real damage. Being on a slight hill, the water ran through my cellar but drained out the sump.

I remember a tornado touching down in Salem and Marblehead when I was a kid, and another briefly forming in Vinnin Square on the Swampscott/Salem line in the 1970s. But they are rare phenomena here. More common in the Connecticut River Valley from Central Mass. to Central Conn. than in coastal Mass.