I cannot look into the sky without experiencing some sort of emotion. My normally restless nature becomes utterly stilled by the realization that there are no discernible limits, nothing between deep fathoms of space and myself. The idea that the sky is largely unexplored and untouched I find to be enticing. I would give anything to be able to plunge headlong into those mysteries and forever lose myself in them.
Best of all are those days when I step outside and am greeted by a stiff wind, the sweet scent of rain, the brilliant flash of lightening and the deep-toned voice of thunder. In Texas, the months of April, May and June are the best to observe the supercells our slice of America is famous for. And, I’ve noticed, some of the most opportune moments for cloud photography occur in the last two weeks of June. Thus I have been understandably busy.
Last week, we had been preparing for an evening vist from the members of our church. The house was clean, the children dressed and ready. A kind of low lull fell over the household in those last hours of afternoon. I found myself irrisitably drawn outdoors despite the heavy humidity and heat (which I little mind anyway). What a sight greeted me as I stepped out the back door!
As my eyes traced the south-bent curves in the cloud, I felt a familiar twinge in old scars and a strange sort of electric prickle in the air. It took only a second to ascertain the reason.
The weather had been so dry the past several weeks that this small storm cell was about the most welcome thing I could have possibly been greeted with. It was a small down-burst – a cloud sneeze if you will – and it appeared to be moving north.
A few minutes later, the rain was really coming down. Cloud-to-ground lightening was falling everywhere, dangerous to myself I suppose, but not something I usually heed. The danger I find fascinating.
Fifteen minutes later, the young storm cell was rapidly maturing. Lightening was less frequent, but no less loud and dangerous. The cicadas and mockingbirds caroling around me scarcely noticed it.
By the end of the day, the clouds had cleared and the storm remnents dripped fire as the sun sank beneath them.
Yesterday afternoon, I felt the same call again and retraced my steps, albeit out the front door this time. A magnificent whale’s mouth greeted me stretching north to south, but most spectacularly in the north.
There was a great deal of activity in the sky: clouds were mushrooming to higher levels and others were being torn in shreds by the wind. I could identify several kinds of cumulus and stratus mixed in the atmosphere above.
To the east, the sky was still clear, but hinted at darker things to come. The clouds were visibly trembling and swelling.
That’s when I noticed it - a shimmering grey curtain cascading to the southwest. I had never before seen the beginning of a rainshower before. Uusually storms are somewhat mature by the time they reach me.
Elsewhere, the sky was lowering grimly over the prairie.
The winds shifted and rolled; I couldn’t tell from where I stood exactly where the storm was headed. It seemed to be coming from all directions. Later I discovered that this was a stationary cell that built over my house and stayed there for the duration of its life. It was drawing the winds towards itself, not moving on the crest of one.
It certainly produced a great deal of atmospheric drama. The rain continued the rest of the afternoon and into the night. Early, early this morning I awoke hours before dawn and padded softly to my west-facing window. To the south, I could still see bright flickers of lightening.
Maybe I am hopelessly romantic, but I cannot gaze upwards without wondering if it isn’t without some sort of joy that these things happen. There is hardly anything in the world as joyous – let alone as beautiful – as a storm swelling higher and higher until it can reach higher no longer. And then there is the other joy of the rain as it falls gleefully to earth. Joy of rising and joy of falling…
Oh yes, I am most definitely a hopeless romantic.
