The city of Portland has decided to hold the fireworks show Thursday night because of heavy storms.But I had some fireworks. I wanted to get some pictures up, but getting the right stills from the video I took is proving to be more annoying than it should be, and tomorrow I'd probably be spending my life as a member of my family's slave, so who knows when that'll happen.
The text version is this:
First there was nothing much, the occasional flash from an indeterminate direction. Later there was sound and fury. Thunder, rain and wind. The wind drove pulses of the rain down the street that was now a river, the thunder seemed to come from all around, and this went on for time without end. Until, you know, it ended.
Then there was nothing, unremarkable calm. It was at this point that I learned the fireworks had ended.
Then at some point I went outside and looked down the road. At first the sky seemed a single shade of gray. Then part of it lit up, then another part, then another, and another.
I don't think I can add too many more "another"s because only so many clouds actually did the lighting up, but there were varying brightnesses and timings and whatnots.
It's actually still going on, tried to go out and get something now, but it's too dark for the camera, Which is too bad because it's, if anything, more impressive now. I'll be missing it because I need sleep.
I did get some still shots though, I told the camera the sky was stary and it took a 15 second exposure.
I switched into thingy mode and turn whatchamacallit (I know nothing of cameras) up to 1600 which makes the evening sky look like midday and kept on snapping pictures until one of them caught something:
But the point was never about the bolts themselves, most of the time you couldn't see them (though there were some impressive cases when you could) nor was it about what an average of the sky looked like over 15 seconds.
It was about how sections of the sky would just light up. It was about how the show was without end. It was about how there was more color than I'm used to seeing in lightening. It was about how you could watch and it never seemed to get old.
It was a very good thunderstorm, is what I'm saying.
I know a...I suppose he's a little old now to be a boy. I know a young man. He's very into clouds.
ReplyDeleteA couple years ago we had a barbecue. It was raining for most of it. At first it just seemed annoying, and for the actual barbecue part it was.
But then he went out on the porch to watch the storm, and a few of us followed. He told us about what was going on in the sky. Listening to him, even if you didn't necessarily understand every word, you felt for a little while the joy he had at seeing that storm. I hope someday I'll see another storm with him. (Maybe next time it rains I'll go out and try to capture some of that joy on my own.)
With this post, you remind me a bit of him. (Though he would have used the word "nimbus" a lot more.)