DIY storm protection for your automobile

One of the more comprehensive thunderstorms struck last Wednesday in the midst of Natalie’s Zoom watercolor class, and while I intended to cover her street-parked car with blankets to prevent hail damage, I (a) delayed everything because that’s what I’ve been doing for some time now, and (b) chickened out when the marble-sized hailstones began to fall. One of them broke in two and both pieces hit me as I cowered on the porch.

I don’t think that hail dents in automobile bodies are as big an issue as they once were, for body shops have learned to pop them out like they do on airplanes. This requires a good deal of labor and/or some costly machinery to briefly generate the Mother of All Magnetic Fields through the dented area.

Well, the storm abated, and Natalie’s Honda suffered no damage. But her Zoom watercolor class is widespread and everyone was concerned with the weather. We were thus informed that the sky was darkening in Circleville, about 15 miles west.

So I grabbed a pair of blankets I don’t use much and laid them across hood, roof, and trunk lid. Another trip inside yielded some Harbor Freight welding magnets to hold the blankets down, and that’s how I learned that the hood was, um, plastic. That stuff does not dent, so I rearranged the hold-downs, adding a substantial chunk of sandstone for the trunk and a half-filled 5-gallon bucket for the roof.