::Originally published August 2, 2006 on my Lone Prairie website. I’ve been thinking about the weather a lot lately, even more than my usual obsession which begets checking radar and weather apps five or six times a day. And in a search of my old blog writing, I found a surprising amount dedicated to the weather. It makes sense; when I was living on the farm, there wasn’t much else.::
I went out for a run and found a surprise in the sky waiting for me when I turned around to come back. Being used to the dry and hot weather this summer, I have foolishly learned to pay little attention to the dark clouds because they had been consistently bringing nothing.
Not this time.
Spread out like a topographic map on the edges, the clouds rippling under the weight of the miles of cloud above, the dark sky was sliding to the earth in deep gray. Rumbles and flashes of pink and white lightning only enforced my need for speed on the return run. Then, Dad pulled up and gave me a ride home.
At home, a safe leap within reach of the house, we stood outside and watched the storm form above us. At first it was all color and threats. Then, the soft applause of the first gusts of wind hit the trees until it grew louder and the hollyhocks were snapping about and the large cottonwood tree in the front yard started the rattling sound of stronger winds.
Dad pointed up. “That bit of blue looks like ice.”
“Think it’s gonna hail?” I asked.
“Hope not.”
“Maybe you should put your truck in.”
When he came back, we watched. A fat drop splattered on the side of my face but there wasn’t much rain yet. The wind picked up and the skinny trees, stripped and bared from last year’s big storm, waved about like fans looking very much like trees from a Raphael painting.
“Last night, there was a town in Minnesota that got wiped out by a bunch of tornadoes,” Dad commented, both of us still watching the swirling mass above us.
“What town was that?”
“Butterfield, I think.”
The cloud overhead looked like a huge, leering genie with monstrous muscles, diving low.
“Well, FEMA can do that just as well as a tornado can,” I said, thinking of the Churchs Ferry buy-out debacle.
We stepped up onto the front porch and continued to watch the free show, the wind chime on the south side of the house clanging in the wind, the trees ever louder.
Then it started to rain.
“Looks like the farmers were right,” I said. “Now that harvest has started, the rains are going to come.”
We both laughed dryly, though it wasn’t really funny.
“Nothing like living in the midst of a bunch of realists,” I said.
A loud crack of thunder and a wall of water, and I went inside.