It’s a start…

Raindrops smatter the windshield

Today at about a quarter past five in the afternoon there was a terrific lightning flash really close, followed by a clap of thunder that made me jump, right after jumping because the lightning caused snaps on the ground as I walked along. I didn’t quite see what snapped, but I sure heard it. One lightning bolt, two jumps; that’s pretty good. So far it hadn’t rained even a drop. The National Weather Service is publishing Red Flag Warnings for lightning-caused wildfires here in the foothills.

Dang! That’s all we need! It has been very windy off and on, enough wind to have actually blown two socks off the clothesline! Then, finally, a smattering of rain. But nowhere near enough to suppress any wind-blown wildfire, that’s for sure.

Off in the distance to the south I can see dark bands of rain pouring out of the clouds, but it hasn’t gotten up here yet. I lived through the most destructive wildfire in history in this area in 1961, and I don’t want a repeat of that awful experience. The fire was clocked at between 45 and 60 miles per hour. There was no escape, 200 houses were lost and two people died. This area has grown up so much that now 2,000 houses would be lost if that fire came through.

Think rain. Lots of rain.

An hour of violence

Last night between midnight and 1AM we experienced almost constant lightning, at least 200 to 300 flashes per minute. Around 12:30 the wind started and built up to a crescendo making us get up and close windows. Trees were shedding leaves which were swirling around and hitting the house, along with small twigs. Then the banging started! No tree has enough falling twigs to make the noise we heard—it was hail! I opened the front door to see hail stones bouncing across the front porch, stones that were the size of nickels. The noise was deafening! Thunder was a constant roar and the incessant crashing of hail stones made for a time when conversation was impossible without shouting. I turned on a radio to an AM station and heard what sounded like frying bacon, with loud pops accompanying a steady background sizzle.

I know, I know, you’ve either experienced or heard about storms that produced baseball-size hail, or lightning that was constant, making the night look like arc-light daytime, but that’s Texas stuff. Here in central California we usually get silky zephyrs, sweet honey-drizzle-gentle precipitation and faraway lightning. I doubt that anyone in our valley slept through any of this.

Then around six o’clock it started again, only closer. The lightning strikes were fewer, but they were flash-boom close. We have hundreds of feet of buried pipes here, for water, gas and electricity, and they were acting like a huge antenna bringing even farther-away strikes up close and personal. When this storm is over, I am going to take apart an electrical outlet in the bedroom that snapped loudly at each lightning strike. Its ground wire must be loose. It was like having a cap pistol (remember those?) snapping only a few feet away with every flash of lightning.

When the sun is up, I will take some pictures of all the tree parts now on the ground. Stay tuned.

Some people have all the luck

Down here in the foothills at around three in the afternoon it is over 100F/38C° while in the middle of the picture above I see a big white puffy cloud dumping cool moisture where the rest of the family is. Rain, plus a bit of lightning, some wind…making the rocks really slick and you kind of have to watch out for falling huge pine cones and lightning might spook your horse and you get tossed into the frigid, raging river and every rare once in awhile you just might get hit with a billion volts—

Maybe things aren’t so bad here after all…

Photo: Naval Research Laboratory Monterey