I have always loved a good thunderstorm. There's just something ironically soothing about the steady pounding of rain and rumbling crashes of thunder that put me in awe of nature every time.
I think I inherited this fascination from my dad. He's a sucker for a good storm, too. Once when I was about 7 years old, my whole family got stuck in an airport for a few extra hours because some severe storms had grounded all the planes. Enormous bolts of lighting were jolting across the sky every few seconds and seemed to be dangerously close to the other side of the glass. Everyone else was waiting the whole thing out a respectable distance from the windows. My dad, however, had his nose all but pressed to the glass, craning his neck to see every bolt of lightning from the best possible angle.
The point is that I got not one but two very satisfying storms today. After days of suffocating humidity, all of the moisture that had been building let loose. I couldn't properly enjoy the first wave of storms because I was stuck in my car at that point. Nothing ruins a good thunderstorm like having to drive through it--especially when it's raining so hard you might as well be driving through a 10-mile waterfall.
The second set of glorious storms, however, waited politely until I was at home to break loose. When the storm started to really get going, I abandoned the book I was reading and took up residence on the porch swing on our walk out basement patio. The swing dangles conveniently from the first-floor terrace that hang out over the patio, so I could watch the clouds bust open with no danger of being struck by lightning. That's always a nice bonus.
The temperature had dropped at least 20 degrees from the sticky 90 it was hovering around earlier, so I wrapped a beach towel tight around my shoulders and padded out barefoot in my PJs. The giant quarter-sized spiders who take up residence under the terrace every summer were unfazed by the weather, but at least they seemed content to stay on their webs away from the swing. Not that that stopped me from checking up on them regularly to monitor their positions.
No one else in my house was still awake to marvel at the storm with me, so I just sat their swinging gently back and forth humming hymns to myself and watching the sky light up like someone was shooting pictures with giant flashbulbs. Most of the time it was quiet except for the rain splattering on concrete. But every so often, the thunder would all sort of rumble out together as though someone had corralled it up in the heavens and it finally got strong enough to break loose.
Across the river in Canada, someone pulled their car into the park and sat facing the water for a long time. They were still sitting there when the mosquitoes finally drove me inside. Maybe they were storm-junkies like me.