The White Persian, pre-hail (Emily Goldstein/TDMN)
== 8 p.m. ==
At the Arboretum, glass sculpture exhibit + giant hail balls = 6 smashed lily pads.
A Dallas Arboretum spokeswoman called what happened to the “White Persian” sculpture “minor damage.”
Minor, of course, is relative.
The arboretum has glass sculptured arrayed across its 66 acres for its Chihuly exhibit.
“We don’t put up protection,” spokeswoman Wendy Rentz told me. They can’t. Some of the sculptures are 30 feet tall.
The White Persian is about 30 beautiful glass lily pads sprouting from the arboretum’s ponds. Or it was before the hail. Now it’s about 24 beautiful glass lily pads sprouting from the arboretum’s ponds.
== 7:30 p.m. ==
Two isolated storms are slamming Dallas and its neighboring cities with up to tennis ball-size hail as they crawl across North Texas.
NorthPark Shopping Center is among the casualties, according to the National Weather Service — its skylights smashed by egg-size hail that is also terrorizing the Park Cities. (Yes, egg-size hail is an official NWS measurement.)
Elsewhere, we’ve got reports of ice chunk the size of ping pong balls, tennis balls, and golf balls pelting cities in a band south-east from the Colony, where the storms were first reported about 5 p.m.
Dallas proper often escapes the worst of these things, but not today, with major hail in Uptown, the White Rock Lake area and along the Central Expressway corridor.
And it’s not over yet. Unless wind speeds pick up, these cells are expected to hang around until after sunset, slowly moving southeast. Tomorrow’s supposed to be lovely (in a 92-degree kind of way), but in the mean time bunker up, North Texas.
And let us know if you hear of any damage in your area.
. Bookmark the
.
