Like The Smell of Rain

Yesterday was a gorgeous June day. . . in March.  Literally, it felt like June.  Warm, sunny, some humidity. The birds were singing, the grass growing, thunderstorm watch in effect.

About four p.m., the thunderstorms started rolling in.  The sky was pretty light though, so I didn't worry much about the weather.  It was too whitish gray to worry about anything severe (compared to the eerie yellow before last May's huge storm that toppled trees all over the neighborhood and destroyed several barns in the township).

That's probably why I was so surprised when out of the sky came pea-sized to nickel-sized hail!  Not just a few hailstones, but many of them, for fifteen minutes or more!

As the storm passed, and the hail lessened, DD2 and I couldn't resist going out on the back deck and collecting a few for examination.  We took a couple of pictures for documentation, to show DH later when he got home from work.

some of the hail on the deck

hailstones, with my thumb for size reference

a really big one

About the time it stopped hailing, DD2 asked if she could eat a piece of hail, wondering what it would taste like.  I figured why not, it was probably not harmful, being frozen.  Like eating snowflakes, right?  I said it would probably taste like an ice cube.

So she popped one in her mouth.  When it had dissolved, she told me it didn't taste like ice, it tasted like the smell of rain.

Tastes like the smell of rain.  Wow, what a description!  Now I wish I had tasted a hailstone before they all melted.  I want to taste the smell of rain.