At the close of the furneux festival dog show, Carol and Marie headed off at 4.30pm on the Festival Walk with Mack and Macey and found themselves in a very unusual storm.

At first the thunder and lightning appeared to bypass them from the Dassels/Hay street and move towards Brent Pelham, but when they got half-way between Rotten Row and Bozen Green the heavens opened and they were pelted with hail.

Even though they sheltered beside an upright hedge, both humans and dogs soon began to feel the “ouch!” factor as the hailstones struck heads, shoulders, and backs. Looking up they were amazed to see the leaves from the trees being stripped off and flying in the air, and looking down they saw the forms of the hailstones were very strange and barbaric! They had spikes all over them!!!!

The storm lasted only 5 minutes, and as they went on their way, they crunched the hailstones underfoot for some time, because they were clear and slow to melt. Later on, when home, Carol searched the internet for some considerable time to find any record of anything similar, or an illustration. After 50 pages of Google eventually she found a photo of the exact same style of hail taken in South Central Nebraska on April 6th this year. She contacted the webmaster of the US National Weather service for permission to publish these photos on thepelhams.net. and received an enthusiastic reply. They call it  “The Rorschach Hail Test”!

News of roof damage to buildings and cars has reached us since.