It was last Saturday evening, and my wife Rita and I were watching television in the living room of our old farmhouse.

We have one of those window air conditioners that makes so much noise we have to turn up the volume on the TV. So we really couldn’t hear anything outside the house.

I thought I saw a flash of lightning through the window, but I wasn’t sure. It could have been a reflection on the window from the TV.

But then we started hearing a pinging sound. It’s happened before when heavy raindrops hit the outside of the air conditioner.

There was nothing about a storm on the weather report earlier in the day. Even that “Alexa” thing on the end table right next to me didn’t indicate any storm in the area. All it showed was cloudy and 84 degrees.

But then the pinging got louder. It sounded more like hail than raindrops. And it kept getting louder. Then the windows started rattling.

I muted the TV and used the remote control to switch off the air conditioner. That’s when we heard the wind, the hail and thunder.

We both walked to the front door and looked out. Pea-sized hail was bouncing off the ground - and our cars. We saw the 50-foot trees around the house swaying in the wind.

I’ve never seen a tornado, except on television, but it sure felt like a possibility that night. The hail started growing in size. Soon it was the size of a grape. Then closer to golf ball size.

There was never that tornado siren that we’ve heard before, so we didn’t go to the cellar. We remained at the door watching as the hail continued coming down.

The lights in the house flickered a few times but didn’t go out. But we made sure we had flashlights close by.

Eventually we went back to the living room and just sat down and listened to the storm.  

Moments later we heard the wind pick up again. Then there were thumping sounds on the roof. We hoped it wasn’t one of the big trees coming down.

It seemed like the wind continued for hours, with the big trees swaying all around us. It finally subsided later that evening, with no big trees falling on the house.

Sunday morning we surveyed the damage: clusters of leaves and branches covered the ground around the house. Two big branches lay inches from my car.

A huge branch from a 50-foot ash tree had snapped and covered the chicken house. Another tree near our orchard broke in half and settled on the fence.

Six big trees in the woods were uprooted. A few more broke in half.

Thankfully, no one was hurt and no structures were damaged. But it’s going to take a while to clean up.