I'm Giving Up Trying to Understand the Weather.

We've had a couple of wierd weather experiences here this summer. Things like it raining in the backyard, but not the front, or waking up in the morning to discover everything on the deck blown over to one side except the chairs and the grill. Things like that.

Last night we were at a church activity, and as it was ending we started hearing the rumblings of a storm. There were scary storm cloud directly overhead, and lightning flashes to the north. The lightning was so close, that you couldn't really count between the flash and the thunderclap.

It was rather spectacular, because it was almost as if the sky was split in half over the church. The northern and eastern half was a wall of scary clouds. The western and southern half was sunny blue sky.

Our church parking lot was full of people standing around gawking at the lightning, pointing here and there at spectacular flashes or a particularly threatening cloud. Our family, however, was racing toward our cars and out of the parking lot. M. brought our grill to church, and driving through a thunderstorm with a tank of propane strapped to the back of his truck is NOT where he wanted to be. We high-tailed it out of there.

(We've learned that the way to tell natives here from transplants is to see what they do during storms. Transplants listen to the weather radios and hide indoors and in the basement. When the weathermen say to go indoors, we go. Natives, however, head out to the porch, the deck, or the driveway and stand around. )

When we finally arrived home, the view was just as surreal. This is the view from our front door. (I apologize for the exposure. The sun was setting and backlit all the houses.)



This was the view from the back window. That is not a blue sky. That is a scary wall of clouds full of lightning and hail.