Awe inspiring

The coolest thunder storm just passed right overhead. Probably the best I’ve seen since I was a child.

The light got dimmer and dimmer until it seemed as if we were in the middle of an unscheduled solar eclipse. The clouds turned a deep brown-yellow colour which I don’t ever remember seeing in the sky before; I’ve heard people say that something was the colour of a bruise, and that’s the closest I could come to describing it. Then there was a rolling rumble of thunder which lasted for minutes at a time, with near-continuous sheet lightning a few streets over, but everything remained dry and without a breath of wind. I was standing in the middle of the garden wondering if a Norse God was about to stride over the rooftops.

This continued for ten minutes or more, with a few incongruous bird feathers drifting lazily down into the garden from absolutely nowhere. Then in a matter of seconds the wind picked up, it began to spot with rain, and the heavens opened. Shortly after that two cats arrived in the house as if the hounds of hell were at their heels.

I think I’ve seen more lightning in the last fifteen minutes than in the rest of my adult life. Truly awesome, in the best sense of the word.

(I realise it may be tasteless to marvel at a storm given the events around New Orleans, but I can’t help but be wowed by nature sometimes.)