Boom

We had another thunderstorm this afternoon, but this one was shorter than yesterday's, and brought no rain. Maybe there was rain elsewhere in town, or in the mountains, but it stayed dry here. There was plenty of thunder rolling about for several minutes, but I didn't seen any lightning. The trees must have been hiding it from me. I do worry about rainless thunderstorms this time of year, as there is no water falling to knock down any fires the lightning might start, and they can grow and last for days, or weeks, or months. I don't want to have to go through another smoky summer, and I certainly don't want to have to evacuate again as we did a few years ago.

The windows were open earlier but I had to close them by noon because the day grew so hot, and though the storm brought no rain it brought plenty of humidity, and now it is both hot and muggy. It's a good thing the nights are still fairly cool. It will probably be at least three hours before I can open the windows again, though, and I'm getting impatient. Finding one warm day so annoying, I wonder how I'll manage to get through an entire summer of them, especially once the nights start getting warm, too.

For some reason my joints have gotten stiff and I've been sore and achy since I woke up today, though I've done nothing strenuous that would account for it. It could be that some plant I'm sensitive to has begun pollinate If so, I hope it doesn't do so for long. I'm moving much to slowly to get anything done, and that will probably continue until the soreness and stiffness goes away. Right now I'm getting sore just from sitting in one spot for too long. I should probably take a nap until the afternoon cools off a bit, since it looks as though I'm not going to accomplish anything anyway.

Spectacle

The thunderstorm decided to stick around most of the afternoon, though the thunder was never very close until about eight o'clock. Then the clouds rapidly thickened and rain started to fall. Within a couple of minutes it had become as fierce a downpour as I've ever seen. It battered the roof so intensely that I thought there must be large hailstones falling, but I looked out the window and saw only rain. Despite the roaring, there was no wind, and the rain fell straight down, making enormous splashes in the puddles that quickly formed.

The noise of the rain was so intense that the thunder claps were reduced to a background noise, except for one that immediately followed a lightning struck somewhere very nearby. I was outside for that one, watching from the back porch, and it felt like my brain was rattling from the concussion of it. Meanwhile the roof gutters were overflowing, great cascades of water falling from their edges and turning a large part of the back yard into a pond. All this time the sky was a bright orange color, as the sun was just about to set.

The intense rain lasted about ten minutes, and I wouldn't be surprised if we got well over an inch during that brief time. But the storm eased as rapidly as it had come on, and within minutes there was only the dripping from the sagging branches of the pine trees. The actual sunset arrived then, the clouds turning a vivid red, but it seemed almost anticlimactic. The thunder is still rolling about, but only distantly. I don't know if it will come close again or not, or if there will be more rain later tonight.

I'll have to wait until daylight tomorrow to see if there was much damage to the plants. The only damage I'm sure of was to the sourgrass under the front window. Some of the plants took a direct hit from one of the gutter overflows, and is surely crushed, if not practically uprooted.

Anyway,it was spectacular storm and I'm glad I got to see it, but I'm at least as glad that such storms don't happen here very often. That would be exhausting.