Destroyer

The eternal optimist. I promise I'll blog more.

 Inch and half of rain since last night. It seems an appropriate time to mention we've broken all precipitation records this year. Including the widespread five-inch rainfall that stoked the Wisconsin and Plover Rivers to unseen levels. Washed-out roads, flooded basements, refilled aquifers.

Our last thunderstorm of the year (I'm calling it) was last week. A tiny cell passed through Auburndale on its way here. But as Jim says, you can start a ride as long as it's not raining. Rolling out, you could see the pipsqueak storm, main body a bit north with little sister clouds trailing south. Still five miles out. I headed south. We met up as darkness fell and I came back through town. I stopped to bid farewell to summer storms. Cloud-to-cloud lightning between brother and sister caused glorious 15-second rolls of thunder. In the dark, the wet blacktop turned to a bottomless pool. Yellow leaves eerily suspended at cruising altitude.

My best experience snuck in one late summer night. Perfectly silent; no wind, no rain, no warning bass notes. Or perhaps we were just fast asleep during any preliminaries. It was as if a destroyer glided in, paused two blocks away and declared war on Iola with a single round from a deck gun loaded with a full six bags of powder.

BOOOOM

"Wow" I think silently, as I drift several feet back down to bed. 

See you again next year.