When Words Collide, Sentences Form

Whether or not the weather is cool...or hot...

We have some funky lightning going on up here tonight. And I'm not talking about an invading former Stanley Cup champion hockey team. I mean the electric stuff in the sky. It's like there's a giant strobe light behind the clouds tonight. And occassionally you can see fingers of light zipping around between the clouds. It reminds me of those static electricity balls at science museums where you bring you hand close to it and you see these little bolts of light jumping around. The whole thing is slightly creepy tonight because it's silent. But it's really, really neat looking.

So as I was driving from my apartment to my friend's house that I am watching for the weekend, I started thinking about how cool weather can be...and some of my favorite weather moments or things...

* Way back when I was a lot younger, I remember Hurricane Gloria creeping up the East coast, all the way to NY. I don't remember a lot of details about what was closed, etc...but I do remember that it was cool to have a hurricane come all the way up to NY. Of course, I have since lived in FL for a while, and The Fam lives there now, so the novelty has kinda worn off.

* The Fam used to take cross-country trips in our motor home in the summer. I can remember a couple of times there were tornado warnings/watches/actual tornados in areas where we had stopped for the night in states like South Dakota. The Mom is terrified of tornados, and she would sit in the back of the motor home and watch out the back window, waiting for a tornado to come pick us up. I guess she wanted to see it coming so she could get a good grip for the ride, because it's not like there was a basement to the motor home that we could run to if we got warning. Fortunately, we were never swept away...but shortly after leaving a campground one time, it was wiped out the next day or a couple of days later. Timing is everything, they say!

* Speaking of tornados, right before a bad storm that could generate tornados or straight line winds moves into the area...the sky turns this evil-looking blue/green/black here. And it's really neat. The wind picks up, the sky looks ominous (now that's a cool sounding word), and you get this chill as you wonder what's going to happen.

* Rainbows are really freaking cool. I love them. There's nothing that seeing a rainbow in the sky can't fix. You can't help but feel happy when you see a rainbow. Southern Texas/North Mexico had the absolute most beautiful, brightest rainbows I have ever seen. The colors were brilliant and clear...as though you had taken the ROYGBIV colored crayons out of the box and lined them all up next to each other. There was seperation between each color, and an intensity that brought a smile to your lips and a tear of happiness and awe to your eye. I have also seen some great double rainbows - in the midwest one time with The Fam on a cross country trip I remember stopping to take pictures of it, over the Sunshine Skyway in FL - which happens to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world anyway so adding a double rainbow is like the icing on the cake, and of course in Texas.

* We get these crazy hail storms up here in MN...and they can be really fun to watch...if you are in shelter and your car is safe. And if you rent so you aren't responsible for dealing with the damage to your home. It's kinda like watching a giant Dippin' Dots machine dump all over the city.

* Despite the fact that I do actually hate being cold outside, and I hate what the following signifies (a hellish winter is really upon us and there's no getting out of it)...I do love the first snowfall of the season. For the first 5 minutes.

And now back to my regularly scheduled viewing of non-stop tornado coverage here in Minnesota...there's nothing like not getting to watch anything on tv in the Twin Cities because of a storm somewhere in the states of ND, SD, WI, MN or even in Canada bordering those states. That's what happens when you're the only metropolitan area in that range.

posted by Steph @ 8:49 PM