Summer Rain

Stephanie and I were talking two days ago and I was sad about the light puke color of the lawn. I had worked so hard to fertilize, seed, water and manicure our lawn. It is a source of pride for me. With the lack of rain and high temperatures in the past week, the grass started to get a little brown. Yeah, I watered it that night, but I was sad that it was starting to go the way of the tumbleweed.

I said what we need is one of those really good summer rain storms that had huge drop that collect in pools in the yard.

It started last night. Around 2AM I woke up to hear thunder. It was awesome as I watched flashes from lightning bounce around in our room. I wanted to go back to sleep because I was tired, but I started counting from the flash to the boom to see how far away it was. Unfortunately I couldn’t remember if you count from flash to boom or boom to flash. The storm was either 2 miles away or 11 miles away. My friend Dave helped me out when I met him for coffee this morning. It is indeed flash to boom.

Ah, childhood memories. I remember being in my parents room as a young child on a mid-summer day, counting from flash to boom with my family. Florida summer thunderstorms were a regular part of my childhood. It was annoying because that meant we couldn’t be in the pool or riding our bikes up and down the street. Or, even better, it meant that I couldn’t roller skate around the neighborhood listening to Weird Al Yankovic on my walkman (Yeah, I wasn’t much of a music connoisseur. I just got hand-me-down tapes). I almost miss those storms up here.

I got my wish. It’s almost 9AM and it would normally be sunny and bright outside. Instead, we have a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. It looks like the sun went down 30 minutes ago and we’re venturing into the darkness of night.