World News for Students of English

21-05-2015 15:00

Hailstones big enough to shatter the windscreen of a car.

“Oh! There it goes! The windshield!”

The moment the baseball-sized stones start falling from the sky is captured on camera near Tipton in Oklahoma. Thunderstorms and floods battered several central US states on May 17th. They followed on from a tornado series that hit large parts of the area a day earlier, cutting power lines and damaging structures.

Parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kansas were either under a flash flood watch or flash flood warning. There were reportedly 29 tornadoes on Saturday that hit states ranging from Louisiana to Wyoming.

Texas and Oklahoma were the hardest hit areas. The damage in Oklahoma was mostly in the southwestern and northeastern parts of the state.

“Oh! There it goes! The windshield!”

Difficult words: hailstone (a piece of ice which falls from the sky and is frozen rain), shatter (to break into pieces), batter (to hit many times), flash flood (a sudden local flood which happens because of heavy rain), reportedly (according to what people say).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com