Thunderstorms

Tonight, when dark storm clouds gathered over Provo, I got excited. I saw lightning in the distance, and I waited for the sound of thunder that always follows and . . . nothing.

FYI: I really like summer thunderstorms. One of my earliest memories involves dancing in a thunderstorm outside my home when I was about six. My then seven-year-old older brother was frantically trying to get me to come inside because he thought I was going to get struck by lightning, but I ignored him. I just kept playing in it.

When I was a kid, after summer thunderstorms, I liked to make paper boats and float them in the gutter. (Who am I kidding: I still like doing that.)

When I was sixteen, I wrote a poem about thunderstorms for my high school English class. I would type it up for you all, but most of us should forget and bury the poetry we wrote in high school, and it's one of those sixteen-year-old poems that one should keep to one's self.

So, yeah, I like thunderstorms. So when I saw lightning but heard no thunder, I was a little bummed.

I suppose the lightning was too far away tonight for me to hear the thunder, but still. The idea of a summer thunderstorm hitting was almost making up for the weird, odd, somewhat disappointing things that happened today. I was hoping the storm would just burst and make my day better, but it didn't. Just some promising looking wind, dark clouds, and that distant lightning without thunder.

I went inside, took care of a few things, knew I should go to bed (I have to get up at 5:30 most mornings), but couldn't resist going on a quick walk just to see if the storm was growing a little bit. I walked out at about 10pm: it was warm (good sign), almost smelled like a thunderstorm (another good sign), but skies were mostly clear (bad sign).

A minute or two in my walk, however, it happened. Big rain drops. Big loud rain drops. I looked up and saw a star-filled sky with only a few clouds. There were visible stars out, and yet rain was falling! I'm sure the wind was blowing the raindrops off course, but it looked like they were falling directly from the clear part of the sky, not the cloudy part.

It made my whole day.

Unfortunately, the rain never got going in earnest. It stopped completely after about two minutes.

Then the wind picked up, and I had an allergy attack.

But for those two minutes, things were good.