After the Storm

Last night we had a huge storm, which caused a power cut and left us without electricity for 6 hours. We had met David for dinner at a local Thai restaurant and as we left the first raindrops fell. Sheila drove back, en route the storm hit, with lots of flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. The temperature dropped by 20˚F in about 20 minutes. In places the rain came down in torrents. Just as we reached the cabin the rain stopped and indoors no power. David drove back a little later and missed all the rain. The storm was overhead for only 20 minutes but made quite an impact.

We sat out on the porch to watch the distant lightning, and I tried some photographs. By the time it was dark enough to do some long exposures the fork lightning had moved on, leaving only sheets to light up the sky. The power came back on during night. There were lots of outages in the region but in the local area it seemed that only our part of the street was affected, perhaps a half dozen houses.

Today in the wake of the storm temperatures are much cooler, I’m sitting comfortably on the front porch typing this. Taking advantage of the conditions I took a walk around the neighbourhood, which is in the countryside just outside McKinney. Later on I walked down the pasture to see if I could get to the creek, but as it is overgrown I didn’t venture far. It sounded as though there were lots of birds down there.