Hail Ewan! (Furnace in the Sky)

Storm Ewan late yesterday afternoon sent the sky black with walls of hail flailing death curtains of menace, drumming and richocheting off both my Craghopper raincoat and the steep hillside that I was so exposed upon.

When I left home, an hour or so of inviting sunny blue skies and friendly fluffy clouds was largely spent climbing Laverstock Down, the slippery paths cloying with sticky mud, hindering my ascent. 

That inviting feeling very soon turned into a biting and bone munching wind that blew through scarf, gloves and hat. BUT, I was going to stand my ground, I was going to wait for the sunset!

Well, this was about it, a fiery distant glow behind these trees, probably about 3 miles away, fast disappearing under the encroaching army of hail clouds. Image is equivalent to 800mm in full frame terms.

Later images had the tsunami of deathly cloud chucking down for all its worth - and the 120-400mm lens had to be used with higher and higher iso figures, up to 3,200 - and just five p.m.!

Unfortunately, despite manual focus (AF was abandoned ages ago) the sheer wall of icy precipitation turned any feature in the landscape to mush - even Salisbury Cathedral spire, to the left, just 'disappeared'. Attempts at editing any of these images, with noise the size of the hail balls they contained, left me unsatisfied and rather annoyed. 

All sorts of the city's lights came on prematurely - and then partially disappeared again, as the first wall of piercing little white pellets were bombarded at me. They mostly bounced off.

Legging it swiftly down the hillside, slaloming around the muddy greasy footpaths, the second wave hit me about hundred yards short of the half cut up yew that I sheltered under, unromantically at the side of the carpark for a ventilation system manufacturers - which had their alarms and security floodlighting set off - by the downpour. 

I had 50 minutes to wait for the last bus of the day home, as I got colder - I hadn't actually got wet, but damp through the overwhelmed raincoat, yes, but with that piercing wind, it was an uncomfortable wait but at least a hot bath soon revived me...

...though the camera had to be dried out - the screen display was going a little haywire, but from previous experience, the D7100's "weather resistant" sealing saved it from dying completely and I know it'll work fine in a few hours.

Was it worth it? Well, I have to say, Yes! I survived, the camera survived and I could have just stayed indoors and watched Pointless, like millions of others, in warm, sterile comfort. The title of that TV programme would have said it all, really...