Boom!

Last night the clouds began to thicken again, and shortly before One O'clock this morning I heard a loud peal of thunder. The arrival of the cloud cover had kept the air fairly sultry, and it remained so all night. Though there was a brief torrential rainstorm of five minutes or so, the lightning continued all night, and I could see it flashing every few seconds, and in every direction. Most of these flashes brought no sound to my ears, but periodically there would be a few more peals of thunder from nearby. The lighting continued flashing even as I went to bed, after six o'clock in the morning, and there may have been more rain later on— though maybe I only dreamed it.

I slept through the remainder of the storm, and this afternoon was once again bright and hot but partly cloudy, the silvery puffs gracing many parts of the sky in all directions. I don't know how many new fires might result from this latest storm, but news reports count at least twenty, and lightning fires in isolated areas often smolder a few days before becoming large enough to be noticed. One immediate result of this storm was that the firefighters working on the fire east of the middle fork of the Feather River, a dozen or so miles from here, had to withdraw while the lightning persisted, and while they were gone the fire more than doubled in acreage consumed, and went from 30% containment down to 20%. Rats!

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Spent quite a while poking the Internets to indulge my curiosity, aroused by jonathangarrett's post about Susie Q. I find it hard to resist such puzzles.