So, yesterday's ride home was interesting.

There were predictions of a severe storm for late afternoon or early evening but at 3:30, 45 minutes before I normally leave work, the sun was shining, there were some small scattered clouds and the breeze was light so I figured that the storm couldn't arrive in just 45 minutes. It was closer to 4:30 by the time I left work and it was getting darker with thick clouds, especially in the south and the wind from the south had picked up but I figured that I was still safe. At that point, the latest report was that there were severe wind warnings too, 90kmh/55mph, but again, there was just a moderate breeze when I left.

An accident just outside of work held traffic back so by the time really I got going, it was closer to 4:40.

As I was riding west, I could see dark clouds moving towards the area and a couple of minutes later, the dark clouds were joined by a brown (?) cloud, weird. I had traveled about 2km/1.2mi when I had to stop to cross the road and that's when I suddenly noticed the cars ahead of me were disappearing into a light brown fog, my visibility was reduce to about 50m/yd and the wind had picked up significantly and then the storm hit.

Yes, it must have been 90kmh winds because while standing beside my bike, I was nearly blown off my feet and then I was pelted with sand and dust (sand from the roads during the winter, the source of the brown fog and cloud). Then hail was thrown at me at 90kmh (but fortunately, it lasted for only a few seconds) and then rain was thrown at me at 90kmh (which felt just as hard as the hail).

When the hail started, I crouched down and put my head down hoping that my helmet would protect my head and my backpack protect my back but as I was glancing at the ground in front of me, I saw what looked like a massive hailstone fall, about the size of two shoes put together. At that point, I went into survival mode and got up to run to the hospital for shelter, about 50m/yd away, and hid under an overhang that covered the nearest door. When I got to the shelter, I looked around and didn't see any evidence of hailstones but the small ones might have melted quickly and what I thought was a big one, might just have been blown garbage as I saw a lot of that blown around.

I was cold and soaking wet and the wind and rain hadn't let up so I called my son for a ride when suddenly, the hospital lights went out and the call went dead (he was on the house phone, a cordless) so I called his cell. When that went to voicemail, I thought the cellular network had gone down but then I realized that I was able to connect to his voicemail so it was still up.

It took him 20 minutes to travel 2km/1.2mi because of slowed and stopped traffic (a couple of trees were down and power lines across some roads) by which time the storm had let up but there was still lots of lightning so I wouldn't have been comfortable riding. About 20 minutes after we got home, the storm was done and there was just a bit of light rain later in the evening.

The shock this morning was that the temperature went from 26C/79F when I was coming home yesterday afternoon to 2C/36F for this morning's ride in.

Rain this weekend and I have a couple of rides to participate in, oh well.

Have a great weekend!