Beaches and hail storms don't go well together. Just think, you are wearing the bear minimum amount of clothing in order to go swimming, all you have with you is a beach towel, your car is parked down the street or not around at all, and the beach itself is a straight slab of sand with almost no cover to hide under. You are kind of a sitting duck.
It should be no surprise then that when a freak hail storm ravaged a Russian beach the other day, swimmers did everything in their power to get out of harm's way. Oh, and of course they filmed it all for our viewing pleasure.
The beach under attack was in Novosibirsk, where a sudden and rapid temperature drop from 105° to 71° F caused a torrential downpour of golf ball sized hail on the unsuspecting beach-goers. Over the course of the three-minute video uploaded to YouTube you can watch as the skies suddenly darken as a hail storm goes from a minor nuisance to possibly deadly all in the matter of minutes.
As the storm gets progressively worse, swimmers can be seen looking for cover wherever they can find it. Some swimmers elect to stay in the water, attempting to duck under the waves in order to avoid getting hit while others cram under tiny beach umbrellas to avoid the falling ice. One brave soul puts his beach towel over his head for protection as balls of ice roll along the beach.
By the end of the video (via The Telegraph) the entire beach is nearly abandoned and hidden under a layer of white ice, and who knows for how long the storm raged after the camera stopped filming. To put in perspective just how dangerous this hailstorm was, one girl in the video can be heard saying, "If we're going to die, I love you."
As you can see, this storm could not have been any more intense, and just think about the damage to cars, houses, and anything else in the area. Insurance companies in the area are definitely not going to be happy.
