Jan 27th, 2020 : What the Hail?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Everyone in the world is aware of Australia’s plight. Devastating drought followed by catastrophic fires burning over ten million
acres, an area bigger than Pennsylvania. It’s killed 32 people including three Americans who crashed a C-130 firefighting plane.
It’s consumed 2500 homes and more than a billion animals. Finally they got some rain which has helped, but it came in deluges
which wash away the hillside soil that fires have denuded.
Then to add insult to injury hail, big hail, billiard ball sized hail.



Fiona Simpson was diving with her grandmother in the front seat and her four month old baby girl in a car seat in the back, when
the rain became so heavy she pulled over and stopped. Then hail started pelting her car and smashed the window where her baby
was so she dove over the seat the shield the baby with her body and got pummeled.

“I could see her — she was screaming — but I couldn’t even hear her it was just so loud,” she said, explaining that she shielded her daughter for at least 30 seconds. She said she had hoped it would pass quickly, but the storm only got worse. Simpson said she unbuckled her daughter’s seat belt, picked her up and tried to pass her to her grandmother so she would be safe, but, at that moment, her grandmother’s window blew out as well. Simpson said she hopped back into the front seat and placed her crying child on the floorboard near the pedals — the only safe place she could find. Then, she said, she tried to cover her grandmother.

I can’t find any pictures of the car, all the pictures in the articles are shutterstock or Getty stock photos, but I get the impression
both were side windows and 78 year old grandma spent the night in the hospital with a “shredded”* left arm.

*Overheated reporter I suspect.

link