Stormfront

In the early hours of the morning, I was awakened by a thunderstorm. It was a pretty active one: not much wind, but lots of lightning and thunder and rain. Y’know that trick for determining whether a storm is approaching or leaving by counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder? You couldn’t do that with this storm because the lightning strikes were coming one right after the other, so you had no idea which thunderclap went with which lightning strike. It was spectacular!

I love thunderstorms, by the way. They’re one of the few good things about summer.

When a storm hits during the day, I love how the sky gets ominously dark, and you can watch the swirling cloud formations. But I really love the ones that hit at night. I love to lie there in the dark and just listen to it. And when it’s a storm like the one this morning, it’s cool to watch the ever-changing patterns of light and dark that flicker and flash, making the shadows move and making ordinary things in your room come alive. And I love the low, booming thunder that you can feel in the depths of your bones.

Maybe you’ll think it strange, and maybe not, but there is something about the savage fury of these storms that speaks to my soul. Rather than nervousness or fear, I feel only exhilaration and—in a strange way—peace. I often wish that storms like these would happen more often, but maybe their very rareness makes them that much more special.

Lee