Weather Gods Finally Locate and Pummel Bothersome Geophysicists

A horrific hailstorm struck Socorro, New Mexico on Tuesday afternoon October 5, 2004, striking particularly hard in the vicinity of the campus of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (aka NM Tech: I attended my freshman and sophomore years there in the mid-70's). Courtesy of ex-Techie John Wright in Oklahoma comes an E-Mail from Socorro 6th-grade teacher Candy Lindquist detailing some of the damage:

The worst damage was in the Tech area. Friends who live on "faculty hill" have many serious roof problems, among lots of other problems. Although our students weren't hurt, thank God, a lot of windows were broken in one building of my school (not mine, through some miracle), and many cars are a mess. (My school is near Tech.) And this is true for many, many cars all over Socorro! There was flooding in the streets, no power in the main part of town, etc. It was incredible!

At the time of the storm, I was with my 6th graders. They screamed like banshees, scared and excited. At points they hid under the table--v. good. We are in portables, and this stuff pounding on the roof and slamming against the doors and windows was beyond anything. I actually had to pull one kid away from the door several times--he was determined to go outside &, presumably, get his brains knocked out! (After the worst of it was over, the kids loved seeing the layers of the hailstones--what an opportunity!)

This sort of event is very unusual, maybe unprecedented, in New Mexico, and probably indicates extreme displeasure at some level in the supernatural realm. Here is a photo displaying the wide diversity of the tennis and baseball-sized hailstones that hit the ground:



Photo courtesy Prof. Richard Sonnenfeld, NM Tech. (More images, plus some AMAZING video are available at Dr. Sonnenfeld's Tech web-site).