A Wild Time In The Old Town Tonight

Not an evening to be on the golf course.....

"The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground." ~ Herman Melville (American Novelist from Moby Dick. 1819-1891)

OK, so the evening was not as dramatic as fighting the huge white whale, but it was unusual to say the least. It was hot today... again... and humid, again. We had a chance of thunderstorms but until 5 PM, nothing really looked like it would materialize. Then the clouds rolled in and darkened and thickened up. Lightning was seen in the distance and a very mild rolling thunder. On radar, it seemed that red and yellow on green was popping up all around us, but here.. on the little "x" representing our house, it was cloudy but not dark. We moved a few plants to shelter and secured several loose objects and a few sprinkles started and just as quickly stopped. We were in a proverbial doughnut hole... storms to the east, west, north and south, but none overhead.

Then around 7:30 the doughnut seemed to start collapsing all around... a reported tornado over near Oceana and a thunderstorm warning.... but it came right when the skies seemed to be starting to clear. Then quickly it began to rain.. big droplets, then more and thunder and lightning in the north and east with a wall cloud dropping down. The winds blew rain from the east, then from the north and west and the local weathermen began to notice circulation in the clouds right over our area. The trees in the preserve were bent over, thankfully away from the house. Sustained winds lifted the hot tub cover partially off and started moving one of the deck chairs around. It rained over an inch in the span of a half an hour and Virginia Beach received even more... almost 5 inches. The wind blown rain worked its way into the brick and a small drip in the sunroom started and then stopped just as quickly.

The rain and wind stopped and we breathed a sigh of relief... Daisy took quite a while to calm down and stop trembling. The biggest casualty was my bird feeder system. I should have taken the individual feeders off, but didn't think about it and the wind bent it over into the rose garden and snapped the metal pole off about 18 inches out of the ground. Bird seed is everywhere and one of the roses is broken, but will survive. I didn't look at the rest of the flowers, but most on the patio were fine. Our neighbors had a tree branch fall and hit their back fence and it broke one section out but I think that is the only tree down back in our little nook.

We had another round of rousing lightning fireworks and thunder with rain come through a bit later, but thankfully, without the wind. Stephen wanted to view a storm from the sunroom, but I don't think he had one this bad in mind. Now, perhaps my personal meteorologist, Nyssa, could explain exactly what this doughnut thing was all about....

PS: There were some crazy golfers out on the course while the wall cloud with lightning got closer and closer. Some people have more passion for golf than sense.

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