Stormy Nights

The last few days have been full of the little summertime thunderstorms that come out of nowhere. Two days last week after work it was raining in downtown, but nothing at our house 3 miles away from work! And the last two nights it would cloud up and thunder, and then just completely miss us. So this morning I had to break down and put the sprinkler out, and it ended up running a little longer than I would've liked after I got distracted with Lilli. And then naturally about an hour after I ran the sprinkler we got a little bit of rain. Then tonight after we got home from dinner we got a HUGE storm. I had gone out in the yard to do some weeding and work in my garden and the sky got dark very quickly. I wasn't done with my work, but Brent had the banister he'd been working on drying out on the deck so I ran in to tell him a storm once again **might** be coming. By the time he got his tools in and I went back outside with Pippin to finish cutting back my herbs the storm was HERE! We stayed outside just a minute longer and then both ended up running for the house when the lightning was getting right on top of us.

BOOM!
This super-cell thing popped out of nowhere and it was really quite the storm. We had lightning pretty solidly for over an hour, which delayed us giving Lilli her bath and getting her to bed. The news people said in a 5 minute amount of time it went from 15 lightning strikes per minute to the 675 you see above. Brent had to run out to the garage for something later and the rain had come so quickly that water had pooled in front of the garage and wasn't too far from starting to flood it, the way it did during the Flood back in May. We were able to turn off our electronics, but it did knock our network off for a while (even though we do have surge protectors EVERYWHERE. We have learned that lesson the hard way.) Hopefully tomorrow we won't see any storm damage or downed limbs in our yard!

During the strongest of the lightning we were huddled down in the kitchen floor - and my lap was THE place to be.Pippin HATES storms - he followed me all around the house while I was hanging up laundry while the lightning was still strong. And Lilli was a bit unsure of this one too (there were a few times I screamed which probably didn't help....). It's a good thing they can both fit because NO ONE was going to give up their spot tonight!