A LITTLE UPDATE.

   In my last post, that was too long ago, I wrote about a serious snow storm that we had.

    Now six days later we had a high temp of 30 C (88 F)! That's what it's like here...extremes. I'm tearing down my fence and worked the whole afternoon which wasn't a good plan.

   Today about 3:30 Pm we had a very heavy thunderstorm. There were very high winds. The rain was blown like snow. Our intersection flooded like it always does. We probably had about one inch of rain. We needed the moisture as it's very dry here.

    So anybody want to guess what might happen in the next six days.

I Love Lightning and Thunder.

     I love a good old thunderstorm.  Now I know some people are terrified of lightning and thunder. They have a good reason to be afraid. I know that lightning is dangerous and causes many deaths, injuries and damage.

     Last night I was wakened shortly after midnight by thunder. The thunder was distant but it rolled on forever. Well, not forever, but for 20 - 30 seconds. Lightning lit up my room. Then I would wait for the thunder. Would the thunder be closer or further away? This storm was gentle. It moved slowly toward me. so there was lots of lightning and thunder. A little breeze picked up and helped to make my room cooler. After 20 - 25 minutes rain began falling. Not hard driving rain, but steady rain. Now the disappointing thing is that I went to sleep before the show ended. The Micro Manager never woke up until morning.

   There's something about the power and energy contained in a lightning event that fascinates me. I know it's static electricity. I'm amazed that so much electrical energy can be formed by wind and cloud. When you think that the lightning travels for miles, that's a lot of energy. When it' rapid fire lightning that's a lot of energy forming in a very short time.


   I was terrified by one lightning storm. I was on a mountain peak. We were watching a small thunder cell move through the valley below. It's cool to look down on a thunderstorm and see the lightning in the cell. All of a sudden there was static electricity all around us. We could hear the crackle. We left the mountain top at mach 1. The thunder cell was 1000 ft below us. There must have been enough energy that it spread far and wide from the cell.

   Hiking in the mountains, it was common to see trees that were damaged by lightning. The tree sticks up and the lightning follows the tree into the ground.

  In the  old days in the country, it was quite common to see a telephone pole that had been damaged by lightning.

  Now there are quite a few songs about thunder. I like Eddie Rabbit's Rainy Night.

    How about you? do you like thunderstorms? Have you got music about thunder and lightning?

    There's also a CD called Natural Blues that has some good thunder in it.

    This panorama taken from the internet shows lightning ove Bucharest.

 




 

My Love of Thunderstorms

     I really love a good old thunder storm. I like the thunder lightning, wind and rain. I like Eddie Rabbit's "I Love a Rainy Night."


    Today my love of thunderstorms cooled off a bit. I had some damage as the result of a severe thunderstorm this afternoon.


     We had wind  and thunderstorm storm warnings today. You could see a build up starting around noon. About 2:30 PM the storm broke . There was lots of thunder, lightning, rain and wind. Rain , thunder and lightning weren't spectacular. However, the wind was spectacular. I don't know the wind speed but the trees really rocked.


     All at once I heard a good bang outside and I knew that something had been hit. I ran to my front window to see a large part of my birch tree had blown down on the car and the back window was smashed out. So a few fast scrambles to get the car under the car port and then the rest of the afternoon talking to insurance. By 5:00PM most of the business with insurance had been done and tomorrow action will take place.

A 6 or 7 m (20ft) chunk of birch tree.

Cleaned the back window out pretty neatly.

My birch that is in the process of its last days.

     Things like this are stressful but I have to stop and say, "Nobody was hurt. All people are safe." This storm was not nearly as severe as the one that took place in the mid west and eastern states. Our power didn't go off. 


    My daughter lives near Chicago and she had a large chunk of her maple tree come down. It missed everything...house, power line, fence, neighbor's house. It didn't even knock the bird bath over. Was she lucky!


     Now just for this afternoon my enjoyment of thunderstorms was cooled . Tomorrow I will look for thunderstorms again.