I had trouble sleeping that night and was awake for what seemed like an hour, seeing some fairly regular flashes of light through my small window shade. When I finally rolled over to look at Chris’ window shade, I realized it was lightning. It had been going on for a while before I heard the first clap of thunder, which came while I was getting out of bed to make my way up to the cockpit. I wanted to watch the light show through the big windshield.

Chris hadn’t awakened with that first clap of thunder, but the sound of the windshield shade going up woke him. We sat there in our seats up front watching the approaching storm, the lightning bolts spectacular, coming fast and furious, and the claps of thunder getting ever louder. Before long, the rain started, and it started coming down hard and fast in no time.

And then with one more deafening thunderous clap, it began to hail. The sound on the roof of the coach was terrifying. The hail sounded as though it must be the size of baseballs, and Chris worried that the skylights in our roof were going to shatter. With the loudest clap of thunder, Cooper, who had followed me to the cockpit, beat a hasty retreat to the bedroom, with us on his heels, while Barley hid under Chris’ seat in the cockpit. It got so loud that we put our hands over our ears.

When Chris was able to make out the size of the hail, he said it looked to be about the size of marbles, but it sure sounded like baseballs! Thankfully the hail blast didn’t last very long, but the rain hung in there for quite a while. A large, slow-moving storm it would seem.