How else to explain why at least one referred to penny-sized hail the other day? Jim Sullivan attempts to rain on that parade:

... [T]he correct equivalents for hailstones use sporting equipment. Golf balls, baseballs, softballs, basketballs. That's the scale. Anything below the size of a golf ball is just hail. Anything above the size of a basketball is just ridiculous. ...

Jim also provides proper units of measurement for tumors, Glenn Davis's behind and his own blog posts.

Brad Searles reports on, posts photos of an incident on Franklin Street around 10 p.m. last night:

A rotted tree next to our place decides to fall... directly on to an idling taxicab. He'd been sitting there for all of two minutes, and WHAM. Fortunately he wasn't hurt, but it was a close call.

Saul Blumenthal took this Zakim rainbow photo yesterday.

Eeka is liveblogging the thunderstorm going on even as I type:

2:18 BOOM
2:19 CRASH
2:20 whoosh, thud, BOOM

The photo is the view from our Roslindale porch. It's so bad the garbagemen are waiting it out in their truck, idling in front of our neighbor's house.

Ah those lazy hazy days of summer. The living may be easy, but the breathing can get tough for some people. Heat, humidity, and inversions can ratchet up the pollution levels and make the air we breathe unpleasant - and unhealthy.

Boston's own Airbeat displays hourly measurments of pollution levels in Boston. Funded by the EPA and maintained by community and student groups, Airbeat displays current data and links to national sites on air pollution and health. You can even sign up for e-mails that warn you when air quality is likely to suck.

Tammy must have one of those old Amphibicars. How else to explain how she survived flooding and a Florida-style sinkhole on the West Roxbury Parkway near where it meets the VFW Parkway after today's storm?

Herald editor camped out at the Entwistle trial complains because when deliberations were over for the day, he had to drive home during the hailstorm:

Try sitting in a cramped court all day then driving away into traffic and some summer fury. This assignment ain't no picnic. ...

Joe Shaw took this awesome photo - the sort you'd normally only expect to see in the Midwest - out his window as the storm rolled over Cambridge.

OK, I admit I'm posting this mainly to run a headline that says "Mothball-sized hail!" because, really, when's the last time you saw a headline like that? Let alone actual mothball-sized hail, as reported by a woman in Seekonk?

As I type this, it is pouring here in Southborough, although it's nowhere near as bad as yesterday, when we couldn't see to the other side of the reservoir along Rte. 9.

UPDATE: Apparently mothballs are a common unit of hail measurement. Go figure.

After being sucked through a trans-dimensional portal last evening.