Yes! That thunder last night sounded like it was right outside my window. It was the best thunder I’ve heard since moving to Oregon. I also enjoyed the power flicker, since it gave me a chance to be smug about the fact that all my computers are plugged into a beefy UPS.

If there’s one thing I miss about the south (and I’ve said this before) it’s the thunderstorms. Tornadoes are cool too, but only from a distance.

Yeah, I admit (apart from one earth-sundering, soul-frightening clap I woke to in Cleveland once) thunder is pretty cool. Sometimes it messes with my dreams.

The last week at the U of Chicago, it was so hot. Everyone had closed their doors to study scantily clad. All windows were open, trying to catch the occasional feeble breeze. And then there was a thunderstorm. It was the best one I’ve ever been in. The night came on fast, and the open windows gave off gusts of spray as if we were at sea. The wind was everywhere, a steady, curious presence. The lightning illuminated the gothic buildings across the green avenues. We danced in the rain like child-gods.

It was gorgeous.

Ah yes. One of my first (and fondest) college memories is of a huge thunderstorm durring orientation. The college housing had the added advantage of being pretty much a huge courtyard surrounded my long skinny buildings. THe lightning was right over our heads! There was much dancing in the rain, as well as mud-sliding down the small hill at the far end (and a couple of streakers!). They tried to get us all to go inside because of the lighting, but we were not deterred. :)

And I totally agree with you Ryan! I really miss those Texas thunder storms! You just don’t get those around here. Although I did have the pleasure of seening an awsome lightening storm in nothern cal. They were a few miles away so the thunder claps came a good 15 seconds or so after each flash. Very eerie, almost surreal…

Once, when I was 16 and still driving on a permit, I was driving home from work with my mother in the minivan. The skys opened and the rain fell in biblical proportions. It rains a lot in the northwest, but most of it is a sedate but steady drizzle. This was serious, wipers-to-full-and-man-the-defogger rain. I’d never actually driven in rain like that before.

So, I was making my way home via Davis (a small, very narrow road that bypasses much traffic). In the best of weather, the bridge on Davis was (before being widened) a bit narrow for comfort. Here I am in a minivan (not a small vehicle – we used to have to fold in the side mirrors to park it in the garage), going over this narrow bridge (did I mention that it was on a curve?), and through the rain pounding on my windshield, I see a Bus approaching the bridge at the same moment as me. This bus has to be at least two feet wider than the extra-narrow lane it is occupying. My mother let out a matronly squak of terror and I managed to cross the bridge without incident.

I’ve never been more frightened driving.

Oh, yes, I’d almost forgotten my first real experience with big thunderstorms, when I went to Wyoming during the wet season. We’d be dug in at some site and the wind would come up. “Uh, Dr. Bob? Look at that cloud.” “What, the one boiling up over the butte like the wrath of God?”* “Yeah. Should we leave?” “Enh, maybe in a few minutes.”

So eventually, as the rain actually began to fall in the newly twilight hills, we would arrange the tarps, weight them heavily, dig new trenches to save the bones from torrents of eroding water, and run for the trucks. Or, if we were at a less established site, the more hardcore of us would stay out for the first 15 or 30 minutes, refusing to lose the chance to find where the vertebrae were weathering out from, or whatever. THEN we’d slog for the trucks. By the time we got there, the Mount Merilionite (part of a family of clays that expands in water) would have adhered to our boots in thicknesses of 4-6 inches. We would rocket back along the hole-pocked ranch roads, trying to avoid new erosion and mudslicks, watching through the rear window ass the great black cloud fingered the painted hills like a man-o-war jellyfish feeling for prey.



*Actual Dr. Bob Bakker quote

...ass the great black cloud fingered the painted hills like a man-o-war jellyfish feeling for prey.

Umm. That was “as”. I have really good typing accuracy—but not perfect. Guh. Sorry.

My first REAL thunderstorm was a few monthes ago, driving thru Utah and Wyoming, watching as a very large storm complex ravaged the Wasatch mountain range. It happened sometime between midnight and three in the morning as i was driving to Laramie, it added a very surreal twist to my sleep deprived and longing state of mind. I couldnt generally see the mountains to the south of me, and yet a flash of light would reveal these great towering mountains. Surreal, and an odd note to a very odd trip.

The first time my drivers-ed instructor took me out, it was on 217 in a driving rain. With those ruts. I’d never been on a freeway before. I was sure I was going to die. But I didn’t. After that, nothing seemed hard.