As you may or may not know, Central Texas is at the bottom of the region known as "Tornado Alley" -- that area of the Midwest where strong thunderstorms form a breeding ground for severe weather; to include tornadoes and hail.

Such a hail-producing storm made its way through Northwest Austin on Friday evening producing up-to golf-ball-sized hail and it beat the tar out of the west-facing front of the house (not to mention the hood of the Jeep Wrangler).

It started with high winds, rain and thunder. Then the pitter-patter of hail started, so I opened the front door to see what was up and, despite the fact the door is under a considerable overhang, got pelted with hail. The wind, 50 mph gusts, was driving the hail almost horizontally from the west, directly into the front of the house.

A few seconds exposure practically covered the foyer floor with hail -- at that point about nickel-sized.

The assault only lasted for about 10 minutes, but as the size of the hail increased -- and you would not believe how loud it sounded beating against the house and windows -- I was sure that every west-facing window (including a large 6' x 6' window above the foyer) was going to get smashed.

Amazingly, only one garage window was broken. But the siding, and the Jeep took a beating.

Here are some photos I took Friday evening and over the weekend:

Opening the front door after the storm had passed:

A handful of hail. And yes, I was in my jammies:

Measuring the stones at the front door. Bear in mind this was taken after they had quite a bit of time to melt. Stones up to 2" were reported in the area.

The ground was almost completely covered. The dark, uncovered area is a stream of water running off the hill.

Here's one of the holes punched compeltely through the siding. There are about a dozen of these on the front (west-facing) side of the house. The rest of the siding is cracked and chipped in hundreds of places. Notice the "dinging" of the aluminum sheeting (darker color) around the windows.

The trees had just put out their leaves. Now they are prcatically bare again. The entire yard looked like it had been strewn with salad.

The rest of the plants got pretty beat up, including the poor plam tree. Luckily, none of the plants look like they got damaged to the point of not surviving.

There may also be roof damage as some wet-spots have appeared on the ceilings.

Sigh, now to deal with the insurance company.