Crikey, and you thought the crocs were dangerous…
If you had to guess, what do you think was the most costly natural disaster ever in the country of Australia? A tropical cyclone? An earthquake? Attacks by man-eating koala bears? Well, you’d be wrong. It’s actually a hailstorm!
It was on the evening of April 14, 1999 that a rather intense and surprising supercell thunderstorm ravaged the city of Sydney dropping hailstones as large as five inches in diameter all over the densely populated area. Adding insult to injury, a secondary cell with heavy rainfall passed through shortly thereafter further damaging all of the buildings which now had roofs resembling Swiss cheese. The total cost was estimated at about 2.3 billion Australian dollars, which are different from American dollars because our money has trains and Rich Uncle Pennybags printed on it.
It pays to own both Park Place and Boardwalk.
And despite all of that heavy frozen shrapnel zinging through the air along with a lack of warning due to the storm’s bizarre formation and movement, only one person was killed in the storm, and he was struck by lightning.
And sent back to 1985…
Yeah, let’s see Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin fight off a ferocious hailstorm, mate…
And now, for the hail of it, we’re going to answer Melanie’s questions for Share Your World this week…. which aren’t actually her questions, but were posed by another blogger named Tena.
One hailstone, and that earth’s gonna shatter.
Do You Prefer Salty Foods or Sweet Foods?
Why just pick one when you can have both high blood pressure and diabetes? I like both, and no matter how much sweet and salty things I eat, I always have Buster around to slaughter and lower my blood pressure, while being able to wring out the contents of his pancreas for my soda…
Buster’s so much cheaper and more effective than health insurance.
Would you rather be in a place where it is excessively hot or excessively cold?
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be in either. Those possum steaks I make from Buster’s carcass go into the freezer until I’m ready to cook them on a hot grill. I’d imagine if they could talk, they wouldn’t be happy about being in either location…
Mmmmm, steak!
Favorite Mode of long distance travel (Bus, Plane, Train, Automobile, or other).
I’m not a fan of long distance travel, period. Other than my flight to and from New York, I’ve only ever traveled out of the area by car. If I had to go somewhere, it would definitely be a road trip… but that hasn’t happened since 2015, and I don’t have the travel bug like so many other people have…
So much fun…… not.
What was your favorite holiday growing up?
Probably some combination of the Big Three for Kids: Easter, Halloween and Christmas. Yes, two of those are technically Christian holidays, and my family wasn’t religious at all, but Easter and Christmas had already long become secular American holidays by the time me and my sisters were waiting for Santa and the Easter Bunny to show up.
Or maybe both at one time…
What gave you the most gratification this past week?
Learning how to use that stupid phone they gave us at work to fix a few of the issues with merchandise counts in my area. Unlike what most people are using them for…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
The posting of restaurant food is a strange phenomena, isn’t it?
It was when I drew that comic nine years ago and still is…
Thanks so much E.S. for SYW with Tena and me! 😀 I once watched one of the British crime drama/comedies I’m enamored. Midsomer Murders I believe. Anyway there was a murder (of course) and it led to this whole community of photographers. Digital versus old school and process your own film types. One of the old school photographers took a snap of his meal every single day, even though the food remained the same food each day, and it probably took him hours to process each photo. People embrace some odd habits. I hope you have a great week and thanks again for SYW! 😀
What a glorious waste of film that was. Apparently the wrong person was murdered…
I think it’s weird how many people post the food they’re about to eat. Most of the time it looks like there’s enough food on the plate for three people…..and the folks doing the posting weigh about 300 lbs. and you think “HUH” ????
Pam
I hope they don’t post their selfies too…
I agree with you on the weather. I don’t like it too cold or too hot. I live in a place where summers are days on end of over 100 degree F and it is horrible. As for cold and snow…that is something we drive up to the mountains for when we want to be entertained or build a snowman. It is the same reason I don’t own a horse. Both are beautiful but I’m not shoveling that shit. Right now it is raining but it is kind of nice at about 69 degrees. Hey, the squirrels don’t mind either.
Correction: 59 degrees. 69 or even 79 is perfect, but I’m not ready for the heat again.
I would feel deprived without at least one snow each winter (We got one snow this winter). As for hot, I’ll only take that in a drought like we had 10 years ago when it was 110 each day but no humidity. A soggy 95 is absolutely unbearable…
Lots of dead Buster this week!
I guess I wouldn’t look forward to trips either if I had to travel in the car boot…
Yeah, and the ropes they tie you up with before you’re chucked in are a bit uncomfortable…