calm before the storm

emma gave us quite a surprise here in stuttgart on saturday. i woke up at an extraordinarily early (for me on a weekend, anyway) 9:30am on saturday to find that it still appeared to be night. the sky was dark and foreboding... and then the wind started howling around our house. being an old house, not all of the doors and windows are, shall we say, totally sealed when closed. wind and rain started pushing their way into the house as it started to hail. granted, the hail was small, but there was so much of it that it appeared to be snowing. the wind was actually pushing the hail around in the air so chunks of ice appeared to be as light and friendly as snowflakes. (i am a sucker for snow and almost ran outside to play in it... until i took a closer look and decided that i had no desire to have my head beaten in by cold little stones falling from the sky).

stuttgart was apparently fairly lucky, given the lack of damage compared to the severity of the storm. i was actually quite amused to hear my roommate describe this storm as a 'european hurricane... only without the tornadoes'.