05-15-08 Hail Storm At Gracie Engineering Command Post Top Secret Headquarters

The below pictures and video were taken on the evening of 05-14-08 or early morning of 05-15-08, and the afternoon of 05-15-08, and show both the hail storm from that evening/morning, and some of the damage from the storm. The afternoon pictures are of the east wall in the central courtyard in the set of connected buildings in which my apartment and home office is located. The windows in the east wall of the atrium had some windows blown out. The windows in the south wall of the atrium, in back of which my home office/apartment is located, did not have its windows blown out. ( lucky !!!!). Those windows are windows in the very high up vaulted ceiling portion of the apartment. That south wall in the outdoor atrium is the one in one of the below pictures that has my thumb held up in front of it. In that picture, the east wall is at the left in the picture, and the south wall is at the right in the picture. Note the paint that was stripped off from the east wall, but not stripped off from the south wall.

The video shot is so herky-jerky because, when I took it, I was trying also to shield the camera from the side-blowing strong, and big, hail. I was being pelted myself, even though I was standing underneath a walkway...so the hail was obviously blowing significantly sideways. The cool thing about the video is, I think, the massive ruckus/noise that can be heard from the hail.

I believe all of the below are downloadable. In my version of Windows, I right-click on the picture, and/or video link, and then choose Save As. Then I can save the file to my hard drive. They are *.jpg files (the still photos) and a *.mov file (the video). Both the video and the stills are better viewed directly from software on your computer, as opposed to being viewed over the web. Lastly, for the video, it is acknowledged as pretty dark and hard to see, but I've noticed that it is more viewable (lighter, easier to see) if it is viewed with Windows Media Player, and harder to see (darker) in Real Media Player, at least on my computer.

- Mitchell 05-21-08