Wednesday 18 July 2012

The oncoming storm

I locked the door late that sunny afternoon, and as younger daughter and I headed out into the street, noticed for the first time that there was a wall of dark grey closing off the eastern horizon.

That's all right, I told myself. I felt the breeze on my cheeks as we turned west. That meant the storm was blowing east, surely.

As we approached the Dairy Queen, a twenty-minute down-hill trot, I noticed that the clouds appeared to be keeping pace with us, rumbling all the while. Still, the sun shone brightly, so brightly that younger daughter and I took seats well inside the restaurant.

By the time we finished our meals and got up to order our ice creams, we noticed that it was raining outside. I had not brought umbrellas. We decided to eat our desserts inside, in hopes the rain would subside.

It did, after a fashion, and a bus came immediately. At our home stop, the rain-drops were still almost dodge-able. We hurried the final few blocks. Younger daughter was the first to spot the lightening forks. I counted off after the flashes -- just a few seconds. Too close. As we got in the door, it got very dark, I hurried to the other side of the house and could see the storm sweeping in a diagonal line across Oak Bay towards us.
Gee, we're high up, I thought, noting the reason that I had such a great view was because I could see over the tree-tops below the house.

Four hours later, as the storm continued rumbling overhead, another thought occurred to me, and I started the search for candles in this house-sit. I placed them, with matches, at the end of the dining room table where I could feel for them if necessary.

It wasn't, but the flashes continued into the early hours of the morning.

(This happened last Friday, but it was only today that I found a coffee shop with strong enough WiFi to upload the pictures from my laptop online.)

2 comments:

SOL's view said...

Great photos! 4 hours? That was a big storm. I love being snug and indoors when there's a storm going on.

Persephone said...

At least seven hours, SOL! Thunderstorms are quite rare for Victoria. The only problem with that is that people tend to go out to watch them....