I was unfortunate enough to be caught in the freaky hail storm that hit Gauteng's eastern suburbs last Saturday. My car took some damage but not as much as some of my neighbours (I moved it damn quickly into the garage), its in for repairs already.
My next door neighbour lost every single window on the one side of her house and her car's windscreen was also smashed along with a portion of the dashboard. The insurance companies are up in arms and Dial Direct claims to have received 3200 claims in the space of 12 hours after the event. PG Glass and the like claims to have ran out of windows and windscreens by Tuesday afternoon.
Fun stuff.
The freakyness is the size of the stones. The size of the palm of my hand and I cannot close my fist around it.
Go looky here for some images:
http://www.news24.com/Multimedia/South-Africa/Hail-hits-Joburg-20121022I read somewhere that the temperature measured in the clouds reached -50 C, although that sounds a bit excessive to me.