Easter Hail Storm

Spring seemed to come late to our Montana ranch. We were lucky if the ground was clear of snow by Easter. I remember how amazing it was to me the first year I attended General Conference in Salt Lake City and the lawns were already green. So it was no surprise that we would take advantage of one special Easter Sunday when the weather was mild and unseasonably warm to have a celebration. After church, we children made some sandwiches and went to a stand of trees about a quarter to half mile east of the house and had a little picnic.
In the background of this picture you can see the trees where we had our picnic.
As we ate and played we noticed that the weather was turning cooler and the sun was hidden behind advancing clouds. We decided it was time to return to the house. A little before milking time, Warren and Gary were sent on their errand of bringing in the milk cows so the older brothers could milk them. They hadn't been gone long when we noticed the suddenly menacing green color of the western sky.
We had learned that meant hail and I will never forget that color. Our thoughts turned to Warren and Gary out in the pasture west of the house without any protection. As we looked westward we saw something white bouncing as it were across the fields. At first it made us think of the "cotton" from the cottonwood trees blowing along. Then we realized it was hail, only much, much larger. Mom sent Calvin in a hurry out to the truck to drive into the field and get Warren and Gary. . There were two windows on the west side of the house; Mom's and Dad's room had one and the boys' room had one. There were similar windows just opposite on the east side of the house. (This is me at a younger age, looking out the boy's window watching our Primary have a party in our backyard while I sat inside with the mumps.)
In the living room we had a large mirror maybe 3 feet by 5 feet hanging on the west wall. As we heard the first hailstones hit the house with a large thud, we stood frozen in the middle of the living room. We watched and listened as the hailstones pelted the house and the mirror in the living room bounced out with every strike. We didn't dare go to the windows to see if Warren and Gary were safe. We could only hope that Calvin was able to get to them in time. As we waited, we heard a hailstone hurl through the boy's west bedroom window, hit the floor and exit through the east window.
I'm pretty sure Mom's and Dad's window was also broken. After what seemed like a very, very long time (actually probably just a few minutes because there was such a wind behind the hail), the hail stopped beating down and we heaved a sigh of relief as the storm pushed on. Thankfully, Calvin was able to reach Warren and Gary before they were injured and they all climbed under the truck to wait out the storm. That was a wise move. Every vehicle that we owned had the westward facing window broken out. The eaves of the house and the garage had holes in the eaves where hailstones hit the aged wood. Several of our sheep were killed by hail. The hail was bigger than a large grapefruit. Calvin, who was in high school at the time, couldn't pick up a hailstone without using both hands, not so much because of weight but because of gripping such a large slippery stone when his fingertips couldn't reach beyond the radius of the stone to grasp it. From later reports we learned that the intensity of the storm was at its peak as it hit our farm. Neighbors on either side reported much smaller stones than we encountered. We found a stone that fit nicely in a Tupperware cereal bowl and saved it in the freezer for quite a while to show people because we thought they wouldn't believe it when we told them how big the stones were. Fortunately, though we had other hailstorms golf ball size or smaller, we never encountered another "grapefruit" storm.

Here is a picture taken from our yard after a storm (not the one mentioned here).