A sky turned black and sullen, slashing rain, pounding pellets of hail so thick that green lawns looked snowy, streets like rivers with class II rapids, whipping winds, cracks of thunder and lightning and flooding that sloshed into basements, businesses, snarled traffic with abandoned cars and frayed nerves...August 11 will go down as a big weather day in Great Neck. Most frightening was a gas fireball, 7 feet high by 50 feet wide, in a residential neighborhood caused by a downed tree that hit a power line and sparked an underground gas fed fire. The Alerts responded quickly going door to door to warn people to stay indoors until National Grid could come to turn off the gas. - CF