Thunderstorm!

After a few days of hot weather, we had a surprise thunderstorm pop up last night. That's a rare occurrence here, we get maybe two or three thunderstorms each year, usually in the spring. And, it's fairly unusual to get any rain at all in the month of July. The climate here is incredibly mild, and we rarely get any kind of extreme weather. It stays cool for much of the year, but it never gets cold. We often only get snow a few times each winter (or sometimes none at all), and that usually melts within a few hours. For much of the winter we'll have light, scattered showers to occasional steady rain, and the summer is usually clear blue skies from July through September.

So, the thunderstorm last night was a lot of fun, something that I really miss from back in the Midwest (and fireflies, we don't have those either). The first time I heard thunder last night, I went outside in disbelief, and stayed out for half hour or so until the rain got too heavy. Most of the lightning stayed within the clouds, only a few bolts coming down to the ground. Regardless, it was still a fun spectacle. And, the plants really needed the rain!