It's raining...it's hailing??!!

Last night - I was roused out of a sound sleep by the sound of crackling against the window. It was accompanied by flashes of light. In my sleepy confusion - I thought that it was the power crackling (it does that sometimes) as the generator sounded like it had kicked in. As I was pondering...I fell back asleep.

The second time I got woken out of my sleep - I thought that I heard rain, so I got out of bed to see. I walked over to the window and heard the rain and checked to make sure none of the rain was coming thru the open windows. It sounded like hail was coming down - but I couldn't see it clearly. When I touched the window with my palm, it was cool but not freezing cold, so I dismissed hail as a possibility. I closed the window by my bed and went back to sleep. By now - you've probably realized that I'm not really coherent when I'm woken up in the middle of the night. =)

The third time - I got up out of bed to shut the other bedroom window because it was SO LOUD! I finally connected the dots and realized that the flashes were lightning when the thunder roared immediately overhead!

This morning - I talked with my roommate and learned that there were 3 different storms that came through during the night AND that I wasn't crazy...there WAS hail coming down! I guess that there are some spectacular lightning storms here in Dhaka, and they do get hail fairly often. Apparently, even though the air closer to the ground is not cold enough for the hail to stick around, the higher altitudes are cold enough to form huge fist sized hail "balls". These balls fall down and still manage to be fairly large when they hit the ground (melting slightly as they descend through the atmosphere). She has pictures of hail balls that are big enough to hold in two hands!

So - I've experienced my first hail storm and lightning storm in Bangladesh. But the rainy season and the monsoons are still a few months away.