By the time the sky cleared, the neighborhood felt like another planet. Lawns that had been green an hour earlier were buried under white drifts of ice, pockmarked with shredded leaves and branches. Windshields lay spiderwebbed or punched through entirely, glass glittering in the fading light. People moved slowly between vehicles and porches, phones in hand, documenting damage they still couldn’t fully process.

Conversations were hushed, almost reverent: where they were when the hail hit, how fast it escalated, who they called first. Parents checked on elderly neighbors, teens swept glass from sidewalks, and someone passed around a flashlight when the power flickered. It had started as a routine evening, the kind people forget. Instead, it became the night everyone will measure other storms against—the one that taught them how fragile “ordinary” can be.