What to do if you’ve never seen hail before

Sasha Ashall/Staff

This winter in Berkeley has been a break from the usual. Two years ago, the rain barely came to our most sacred city, yet now we find ourselves battling with the near-constant pitter patter of rain. We don’t even need to look at the weather forecast because we know what it’ll say: steady rain all day, every day, for the rest of your life. The amount of umbrellas in Berkeley almost (but not quite) outnumbers the amount of joints jauntily swaying on peoples’ lips. But today, not even your umbrella will save you because tiny pellets of ice have come crashing down on our heads. That’s right, after hours of on and off sunshine and torrential downpour today, hail came pelting down on us from the heavens. If you’re one of many campus students from California or warmer parts of the country, you may never have seen or experienced hail before, and you may be wondering what you should do now. Well, we at the Clog have had extensive, lifelong exposure to those icy bullets, and we have some suggestions for what to do if you’ve never seen hail before.

1. Make sure to Snapchat the entire event and provide some follow-up selfies that convey both your disbelief and the fact that you’ve never seen hail before. If you so please, you can include “sound up” as your Snaption to make sure people live the full experience.
2. Gaze in wonder at the sky and think about how amazing our earth is. Wow! Hail is a crazy form of precipitation! Rain and snow are so basic, but hail is interesting and new, so take a minute to look up at the clouds, ponder the wonders of this world and give Mother Nature the big ups she deserves.
3. Tune out all the assholes telling stories about how much they’ve seen hail before. Maybe hit them with a “good for you!” or “that’s nice!” before putting your headphones back in and minding your own damn business once again. No one cares about the golf ball-sized hail that comes around your hometown every year (pics or it didn’t happen), and it sounds like that place sucks anyway.
4. Take a stroll outside with your cocktail to catch some all-natural ice cubes straight from Mother Nature’s freezer. It’s sunny one minute, and the next she’s chucking ice cubes at you from the clouds. Really makes you drink think.
5. Save a piece of hail and keep it in your freezer. That way you’ll never forget the first time you saw hail :,)

We at the Clog sincerely hope you had an amazing and magical first experience with hail. Mother Nature, you really got us this time.

Sasha Ashall is the blog editor. Contact Sasha Ashall at aashall@dailycal.org.

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