Fantasy

The Hail That Stayed

Hi! We’re back with more!

Before we dive into some sleuthing about the weird weather Melinda and I experienced a few weeks ago, I need to update you on all the things!

First off, I’m Ran, Sarn’s happy-go-lucky sidekick from the Curse Breaker series, and I am plotting more adventures for my series as I write this.

2026 marks 10 since Curse Breaker Enchanted, the original version,published as an ebook and paperback. Did you know that it published on our blog before that in 2015? Do you know what that means?

2025 is the year of the Curse Breaker! What does that mean? In honor of our 10th anniversary, there will be new books! New adventures! The stories that Curse Breaker Enchanted promised that haven’t yet happened yet will happen in 2025, and they will change a lot of things about us, characters, and our world.

That’s all I have planned so far because I have to figure out what trouble we’ll get into for those books, and that’s a big job for a fictional kid. If you’ve read the Curse Breaker series, then you know Papa is always watching me, and he doesn’t know there are books about us. So I have to be sneaky.

But I have 6 months to plan something. If there’s anything you would love to see from us let us know. Right now I just have books planned for it.

Speaking of books, you’re probably wondering how the Rogue Gods Trilogy is going. Book 3, Storm the Gates, is finally nearing the finish line. The characters tried to get Melinda to split the book into two books, making it a 4-book series.

But Melinda said no to that since it’s supposed to be a trilogy and trilogies have 3 books. Nevermind that Douglas Adams has a trilogy that consists of five books. He’s a famous author, and famous authors can do that.

So what did the characters do? They used the third act as an audition for future books. Just wait until you see what they did. It’s pretty awesome.

I’m not sure if Melinda realized that’s what they were doing yet, but I see it. In their place, I would do the same thing since Melinda refused to end on a cliffhanger. So the Kickstarter should be happening hopefully within the next month and you’ll hopefully have your copy of the trilogy within the next two months. And now back to our weather caper!

Driving to and from the auto place, we could see where the storm hit hardest. Right in Melinda’s neighborhood, branches were down, leaves were everywhere and hail too. But just a few feet past that, there was just rain. No debris. No hail melting on the road. No fog. It was eerie.

Melinda posted on social media some of the pictures she took and some people she knew from high school who live a few exits north of her commented with wows and OMGs. They said they just got heavy rain.

While at the auto place, which was 3 miles away in the center of town, she asked about other people’s experiences because that’s what authors do while they wait for their car. One mechanic came from Newburgh and confirmed there was just heavy rain until he got near the edge of town. Then he got hit with hail.

He had to reroute because of a downed tree, but aside from that one tree, there were no others down. Other customers confirmed the same. So what happened?

Why did 10 trees fall within a half mile radius of where Melinda lives? Why did no other trees fall anywhere around her?

A friend of a friend is part of an amateur duo who have a meteorology page on Facebook. Melinda reached out to them, told them what happened, sent the pictures she took, and asked that very question.

While she waited for an answer, she worked the rest of the morning for her day job. Around 1 pm, her neighbor knocked, and they went for a walk. That’s when they counted the downed trees and noticed that they fell in a diagonal line from the nearest exit on Route 9 south. But all the trees fell in the same direction.

The hail lingered (ominously in my opinion) in piles along the long driveway that ran around the complex where Melinda lives despite the temperature rising back into the low 80s by 1 pm.

This picture was taken around 1:15 pm. Doesn’t that hail look ominous?

The hail was gone by the next day, but I kept an eye on it just in case. Its coming was strange and so was its stay, so I just wanted to make sure it didn’t transform into an ice monster or something. That didn’t happen, but maybe we’ll face something like that in a future book. It could happen.

But I digress. Let’s get back to our coverage of the storm. The amateur meteorologists replied.

It turns out there was a squall line of storms stretching across the Hudson Valley, and parts of Long Island, southern Connecticut, and northern New Jersey. These fast, hard-hitting storms can sometimes create something called a microburst.

What is a microburst?

According to the NOAA website, “a microburst is a localized column of sinking air ([a] downdraft) within a thunderstorm and is usually less than or equal to 2.5 miles in diameter. Microbursts can cause extensive damage at the surface, and in some instances, can be life-threatening.”

So now you know there’s a thing called a microburst and it can cause high winds in a small area that inflict lots of damage.

Due to the direction all the trees fell, (they all point the same way), the microburst started somewhere on Route 9 South or near it, crossed it as you do, snarled traffic, got off the exit, then continued knocking down trees before dispersing in the parking lot next to the building where Melinda lives.

Nothing was affected further up the hill, but all the downed trees point at the hill. So that’s our theory. This area is roughly 2.5 miles, so it squares with the NOAA article.

What a wild day! I hope you enjoyed this little detour from our usual content. It was like something out of a movie, and we had to share it with you.

Unfortunately, 4 cars were damaged by fallen trees. Two of them were crushed so badly, they may not be salvageable. The other two might be fixable. We’re just glad no one was hurt.

The day after all this craziness, Melinda went to The Ripped Bodice bookstore in Brooklyn, NY. Park Slope is a beautiful area with old brownstones and plenty of trees and little shops and eateries. She wandered around as she does because the best way to see a place is to walk around it!

After grabbing dinner with her cousins, Melinda went to the bookstore and participated in a panel on Kickstarter, and that was interesting and fun. She signed 5 copies of Curse Breaker Enchanted and put a little note from me in them too. So if you’re wanting a signed copy and you’re in Brooklyn, head over to get a copy!

This ends our grand adventure (for now). Next week, we’ll resume the Rogue Gods Trilogy preview.

***

Don’t forget to follow the Kickstarter, so you know when it launches. Guerren is on the right. Rosalie on the left.

They will either save the timeline and the world or destroy both. Only one of them will have fun doing it. You can guess which one. I might have fun helping them.

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