Lightning Storm
So there is a lightning storm going on right now. It’s pretty intense with lots of lightning, thunder, and of course, rain.
I was awoken about half an hour ago (3:38 AM on my alarm clock) when the thunder in my dreams turned out to be thunder in real life. It was making the cats nervous and they were freaking out in the room; Papaya was licking a plastic bag and Mango was rubbing himself against things in the room — okay so maybe they weren’t freaking out. Regardless, the thunder woke them, which then woke me when they made noise.
So I kicked them out of the room.
But I couldn’t go back to sleep anymore; the lightning flashes were getting more frequent, as were the thunder waves. I decided to close my window so I wouldn’t hear the thunder as loudly. Good idea. As I lay there, various thoughts went through my head. The power fluctuated a couple times (my UPSes went off and beeped a few times). I decided it might not have been a good idea to have my laptop plugged directly into the wall, so I got up and moved it to a power strip. I could see flashes of lightning as I got back into bed. I could still see them through my eyelids, but it was the thunder that really got to me. RUMBLE RUMBLE!
You know the trick where you can estimate your distance from the location of the lightning strike by counting the time and dividing by 5 to get miles? I started off counting the seconds between the flashes and the rumbling. Six seconds, five seconds, five seconds, five seconds, 6 seconds, five, four, four , three…two…one…one??? The lightning was getting closer! From just over a mile to 1/5 of a mile. The intensity of the closer ones were incredible. I could feel the thunder rumbling deep within my body. Spooky feeling.
Lightning in Davis - Photo by Jimmy Liang
I sat up. I looked outside the window. Rain was running down like crazy. I could see rivers flowing along the sidewalk and parking lot outside, with spigots running from overfilled roof gutters. Flashes were going off randomly, but they were starting to take their time. The time count drifted back up to 3 or 4 seconds. Looked like things were starting to cool off. Then,
BAM!
Holy SHIT! I jumped back from the window.
A bolt had gone off, right in front of my eyes. There was no following rumble, no seconds to count….it had gone off like a freaking GUNSHOT, instantly. It had literally gone off on the other side of the neighboring apartments…or maybe even along the freeway…wherever it was though, it was no further than a couple hundred feet. As my ears adjusted back, I could hear several car alarms in the background. The blast had been so intense that it set them off. I grabbed my car remote and put it to my head (to extend the range) and clicked the lock button, just in case. I started replaying that last strike in my mind — amazed at how close it had been, how bright it was, how loud it was, how I hadn’t felt a rumble but rather one single BLAM all over my body. It was definitely a new experience.
The slam of Tony closing his window snapped me out of my thinkingness. Nice, someone else had been awoken by the boom. I opened my door and was greeted by Tony and Tomas. They were talking excitedly about what had happened. Well, just Tomas. Tomas ended up getting a phone call, too. He was thinking it was his brother who had also been woken up by the gunshot.
I told them I saw the bolt go off and how close it had really been, but I don’t think they believed me. Ah well. In the end I had to take a piss, so I took care of that and went back to bed. Heavy downpour outside my window did now make it easy so I pulled out the laptop — and now here I am, writing this at 4:30 in the morning.
The lightning/thunder distance is now up to seven seconds, so about a mile and a half away. Storm’s passing, rain is starting to let up. No more car alarms.
Overall, an uneccesary interruption of my sleep, but a really cool experience being able to SEE in front of me what no doubtedly people will be saying they merely heard last night (the bolt that set off the cars, not the storm in general :-p).
Off to sleep again now. Good night, Internet.
