artillery

We’re back to sub-freezing temperatures and snow after a week and a half of temps in the high sixties that melted all the snow and ice and made the little birdies come out and sing. They must be so pissed right now. I’m not liking it much, either, to be brutally frank, but then I was never under the delusion that the February heat wave was going to persist. Maybe in fifty years, but not yet.

The transition from spring-like weather back to standard February winter weather was a rough one. Sunny skies gave way to mean-looking iron-colored clouds that started to rain Thursday evening. I woke with a start in the very early morning Friday to the sound of what I thought at first had to be a natural gas explosion and laid there wide-eyed, wondering whose house was just blown to matchsticks. While I was waiting for my heart to slow down, there was a flash and another bang.

“Holy shit, that was close!” I thought. “I hope our house isn’t next.”

After the third flash and bang I started to wonder: Is that lightning and thunder? Turned out it was, or at least I think it had to be, because I didn’t hear any reports in the news the next day of dozens of houses or anything else spontaneously exploding. It was the most bizarre thunder I’ve ever heard. There was no rumbling before or after, just a hard, loud bang, like the fireworks that make noise but no sparklies.