Is that hailstone bigger than a bread basket?

Ever notice how hailstones are always communicated by their size in relation to other objects?

Apparently we are too stupid in the minds of the weather broadcasters to know what it means when someone says "half inch diameter hail". Instead, we are told that the hail is "grape sized".

Over the weekend, there were reports of "golf ball sized hail" in New Jersey. I wonder how many people know that a golf ball has a minimum size (1.68 inches), but there is no maximum size? I'll bet most people didn't even know that most golf balls are, in fact, 1.68 inches in diameter. So comparing hail to golf balls is really an indeterminate measure.

On the other hand, it would be fun to flip it around. Imagine at next year's British Open, over the sound of the wind whipping across the Scottish links, the announcer with the English accent whispers, "...and Tiger Woods just hit his hail-sized golf ball into the tall grass."

The Magic Tumblers

When The Queen and I were married, we received as a wedding gift a set of 16 glass tumblers. They were beautiful, but they were so obviously fragile that we knew they would never last. It looked like a glass would break just by looking at it, let alone putting it through the dishwasher - and that was before we had triplets. My sister and her husband, who were married only 10 weeks earlier, received the same exact gift. So that at least one of us would be able to keep a complete set, my sister gave us hers. The tumblers are used several times a week, so it's not like we have hidden them from sight.

We just broke our first one - 18.5 years later. At this rate, my sister's set will be exhausted (still leaving us a complete set) in the year 2287.