Globe Correspondent Matt Woolbright was out covering today’s severe thunderstorms, which featured rain, lightning, and large hail, when he found himself inside one of the boomers:

I had just finished talking with a few Malden residents about a flash flood near their homes. They told me that the storm hadn’t come slowly and gradually. It had just suddenly gotten dark, lightning had begun to flash, and a torrential downpour had followed.

I left and began driving towards Revere, looking for more areas that the storm had affected when I drove straight into it. At first, there was a loud crack from a golf-ball-sized hailstone cracking my windshield, then a boom of thunder and buckets of rain.

Unable to see, even with the wipers going full speed, I pulled over to wait it out. Within five minutes the rain and hail subsided, but I had a clear picture of what those Malden men had described.