All Hail Breaks Loose
by Rebecca on 2009-04-18
(Yes, Iʼve been saving that title for weeks. Just wanted to find time to write this blog, but how could I not write it when I already had such a clever title?)
The last week in March, we had a really, really bad storm right during rush hour. We made it home before the rain got too heavy, thankfully, because traffic pretty much stops in Austin any time it rains. Lots of cautious drivers here.
Anyway, we were cooking dinner when suddenly we heard this racket outside. William checked it out and said that it was hailing. Now, hail is not unusual in Texas. It seems like every time thereʼs a big thunderstorm (a gullywasher, as we like to call them), itʼs accompanied by some decent pea-sized hailstones. (My first thought was, “I hope itʼs not talent-sized hail, because otherwise, we are in the midst of the Lordʼs Second Coming, and UH OH!”) But when I went to look out the window, this is what I saw: golf-ball sized hail coming down by the hundreds. GOLF-BALL. Have you ever seen a golf-ball? They may look small, but bullets are small, too, and pretty deadly. My point is that golf-ball sized hail is bad news.
I thought, “Oh, man. Our car is just a sitting target!” But like I was going to step out in the hailstorm to look at the car, and I certainly wasnʼt about to let William do it, either. So, we just watched the hailstones falling and hitting all the cars in our parking lot and hoping for the best. From what we could tell, there werenʼt any direct hits on our carʼs windshield. And then about 5 minutes later, the hail stopped, the rain slowed down, and the sun came out. (Thatʼs the other thing about Texas storms: they are fast and furious, and then theyʼre gone.)
So, William ventured out to make sure that our car was OK and took the camera. When he came back in, the first thing he said was, “Do you know if our insurance will cover a cracked windshield?” And I was pretty sure that he wasnʼt making polite conversation. So, then we went and looked at our windshield, and sure enough, there was a nice size crack on the passenger side of the windshield. Sigh.
We filed a claim online, and $378 and three weeks later, we have a brand new windshield on our car. There was also some body damage — two dings on the roof, but we havenʼt been able to get that taken care of yet. The estimate came out to $978 for the body repairs. So expensive!
The storm seems to have taken on legendary status among Austinites, though. The man who replaced our windshield told me that his company had to send staff directly to their distribution center to get more glass. There was so much damage here that they ran out! Iʼve seen several car dealerships with hail sales, including an Audi dealership. Hmm. And our insurance company told us that they had 4,100 claims in Austin from the hailstorm. No telling how many claims other insurance companies had.
At least it wasnʼt the Second Coming.