Tuesday, 6/14

Do you remember where you were 15 years (minus six days) ago today?

Fifteen years (minus six days) ago today, June 20^th, 2007, was a date that will live in weather infamy here in Marquette. It was then that the great hailstorm of 2007 hit a surprisingly small portion of the city, yet a big enough chunk to cause over $50 million in damage, thereby single-handedly keeping local auto body and roofing concerns in business for the next year or so.

Now you remember where you were 15 years (minus six days) ten years ago today, right?

I was actually taking one of my half days that day, as the morning was quite beautiful and warm. Walking to work, though, I could tell something funny was up by the way the sky looked; I had never seen clouds that looked quite like that. And no more than 10 minutes after I walked into the station, our Emergency Alert System started beeping and sputtering and the skies opened up. 10 minutes after that, I took these pictures--

The first is of the storm at its peak; the second is off all the hail that had fallen right outside the studio, just a small example of what had hit the city. When I walked home that night, I was amazed by the damage I saw--trees were down, houses had been pelted, and every single car roof I passed looked like Swiss cheese. As I got closer to my home I feared the worse--after all, my car (yes, I had a car back then) was just sitting in the driveway--but once I arrived in my yard I noticed Mother Nature had been looking out for me. You see, my car was in the driveway of the place we were renting at the time, but it was parked under a big tree. The leaves and branches of the tree had absorbed the force of the hail, which meant that anything hitting my car wasn’t going fast enough to do any damage.

Mine, in fact, was probably one of the few cars in this part of Marquette to have been outside during the storm and yet escaped damage free. For that, I thank the tree. And Mother Nature.

So that’s what happened 15 years (minus six days) ago today, in case you needed your memory jogged!

(jim@wmqt.com), writing about this now because I'll be on my way back from Chicago when the anniversary actually rolls around!