A sudden storm packing fierce straight line winds and hail the size of golf and Ping-Pong balls caused minor damage Sunday afternoon, May 25, around the Annandale area. The winds uprooted a 40-foot-tall pine tree in the yard of Ralph and Marlys Yost on Pleasant Avenue and sent a similar size basswood crashing down on their garage. Along Highway 24 on the east side of Pleasant Lake, the storm snapped off a couple of trees in the yard of Gordy and Julie Howard and left their neighbors with missing shingles and broken windows. Hail damaged siding in Southbrook, tree limbs fell on lawns throughout the area and leaves shredded by hailstones littered most streets and highways. There were no reports of injuries from the storm in the Annandale area though it apparently was part of the same system that later spawned a deadly tornado in Hugo and another in Coon Rapids. The Yosts said they headed for the basement of their home at 445 Pleasant Ave. about 3:30 p.m. when the skies turned dark and their TV warned of severe weather. "Everything was just white," he said, from the heavy rain and hail. They couldn’t even see a bird feeder in their backyard a few feet from the basement window. "We were really surprised," she said, when they emerged about 10 minutes later and discovered the trees down. Hail had broken a window at the front of the house. The basswood damaged the garage when it fell and trapped Ralph’s car inside. The old pine tree had provided lots of shade. "At least I’ll have more sunlight," Marlys laughed. It wasn’t long before about a dozen family members and neighbors filled their front yard, cutting up the trees, raking debris and hauling it away to the city compost site. In front of her home at 8112 Highway 24, Julie Howard looked at what was left of a cedar and a basswood tree. "It looks like they were just snapped right off," she said, describing winds that propelled hail and rain horizontally. The hail was a little smaller than the size of golf balls, she and her husband agreed. "I’d say Ping-Pong ball size," he said. Straight on It was hitting their large west-facing windows straight on, she said. "And we were afraid it was going to snap the glass." They moved to the back of the house and were getting close to taking shelter in the half-basement. The hail poked holes in the west side of their screened-in porch and left leaves plastered against all four sides of their shed. Mark Obinger, their neighbor on the north side, lost part of his roof and the shingles blew into the Howards’ yard, she said. Two other neighbors to their north had broken windows and the two homes south of them had trees down. According to one report, the hail left holes in the siding of a number of homes in Southbrook. The Yosts said they’ve seen worse storms. Both lived through a 1953 tornado that touched down between Sauk Centre and Glenwood. It destroyed the barn on her family’s farm and tore the roof off a hardware store in Sedan where he and his father were delivering milk.