Load of hailstones

Today being the winter solstice I got up to photograph the sunrise, but the sun was hidden behind heavy cloud and did not make an appearance ,and that a very short one until 2.30 in the afternoon !. I did wonder at the official sunrise time, however ,about what would have been the significance of a sun no show to the pagans of the Newgrange era ? Anyway the sun did appear at about 2.30pm but by the time I got out at 3.30 it had disappeared again ! I had decided to travel to Cloughmore on Achill , but the drive up was not at all promising and I nearly turned the car around on several occasions. I was rewarded however by the shortest of glimpses of the setting sun as it finally dropped from behind the clouds, as you can tell from the waves it was very windy, too windy even for a tripod so this is a hand held image that needed a high 1000iso to make it possible, not the best settings for high quality pictures but it was all so dramatic I just had to try and capture it. And that dark cloud you see dropped at least some of its load of hailstones on me just minutes later, on the drive home there was thunder and lightening , but i enjoyed every minute of it!!