When the hail arrived

Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

The market had been open for an hour when white stones began striking the canopy above my stall. At first I mistook the sound for somebody dropping a box behind me. Then hail bounced across the table and drove shoppers under the arcade. The labels on my outdoor display grew wet before I could lift them into their crate.

Two neighbouring stallholders helped move the crate and a chair into the covered passage. For several minutes, the noise on the roof made conversation difficult. When it stopped, we found flattened flowers in the planters beside the square and a thin scattering of hail melting around the drain. We wiped the table, replaced the unreadable labels and opened again, though customers returned more slowly than they had arrived.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

The park tennis tournament stopped during its second round when hail struck the courts. Players left balls behind as they hurried towards the pavilion. Spectators moved beneath the veranda, where the sound on the plastic roof drowned out an organiser trying to explain the delay. Several score sheets were carried inside after their ink had begun to run.

Club volunteers gathered the remaining equipment once the storm had passed. Hail lay in the low corners of the courts, and leaves torn from shrubs covered the path to the changing rooms. The organiser postponed the unfinished matches until the next day. Volunteers helped visitors collect their bags and checked the written results so that the competition could restart from a clear record.

Both texts describe the effects of the hailstorms.

What similarities do the effects of the hailstorms share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.