Hail storm ends family’s boating day

Tandy Overstreet and her family, husband Bob and son Dillon, took their boat out for the first time this year. Nature had other ideas for them, and turned the day into a stormy nightmare.

They took their boat out on Lake McConoughy on Sunday, May 3. It started off a warm, sunny spring day, but the weather quickly took a turn.

The Overstreet family noticed the clouds moving in and decided to cut their day on the lake short.

Tandy reached Grant at around 3:30 p.m. and it started to hail heavily. She took shelter under the awning of Adam’s Bank and waited for the storm to clear. At around 4 p.m., she decided to start heading home again.

She drove through heavy hail on the highway headed toward Brandon, and when she reached the dirt roads to get to her house, she realized just how bad the storm was.

“The dirt road looked like it had snowed,” Tandy said. “I’ve never seen it like that since we’ve lived here, and we’ve been here for 14 years.”

One of the roads was washed out, and it looked like a river was running across the road from the rain. They weren’t sure if they were even going to be able to get the boat home.

Thankfully, they made it back, boat in tow.

The Overstreets had to use their scoop shovel to move the hail so they could put their pickup and boat away. Tandy said there were piles of hail, at least six inches deep, sitting around the property.

In the end, they had no damage at all done to their home or vehicles. They had left their glass storm windows on rather than the screens they use during warm seasons, but those remained undamaged as well.