One thing the flatlanders have on us is thunderstorms. Not that we don’t have them, but the hills keep us from enjoying them as much. And as a thing of beauty, a good, big, hot-day thunderstorm is without parallel.
What makes me think of that now is that the weather radio just went off, announcing an end-of-the-world watch (which isn’t as bad as an end-of-the-world warning).
It’s my view that everyone should have a weather radio, a device that just sits there until the people at the National Weather Service in Charleston make it come on by sending that strange buzzing signal familiar to radio listeners, who usually hear it associated with “this is only a test.” These radios are useful especially during the night, for those times when truly worrisome weather looms and action needs to be taken. If I awaken someplace in the next county, dazed, confused, and wondering how I got there, I want it to be my own fault.
But thunderstorms can be enjoyed, as we enjoy huge waterfalls and other natural phenomena that could make an end to us without even slowing down. (Here’s an important tip: Nature does not care about us one way or the other, okay?)
Several requirements must be met for a proper storm. The day has to be very hot and very humid. The air on such days is dead still and seems to carry sound better than it does on other days. A lawnmower a mile away is clearly audible, and the sound of the bees in the clover is almost deafening. The sun is painfully hot on bare skin, and if it’s late in the summer tomatoes in the garden are unpalatable because they are too warm. The atmosphere is heavy and burdensome.
(If you stop and think about it, the formation of a thunderstorm is an illustration of breathtaking natural violence. It can go from a dinky cloud at 3,000 feet or so to a vast towering cauliflower of a storm, its top at 35,000 feet or more, in under an hour. That’s a vertical rise of six miles that takes place faster than most people could walk the same distance on level ground. Immense power there.)
Suddenly the storm is almost upon us.
The air is deathly still, not a breath of wind, but the heat now rises from the ground and roads and sidewalks; there is none coming from the sky. Thunder rumbles louder and louder. Lightning’s static fills radio broadcasts. The little white wisps scoot along under the black edge of the storm. Not far away, lightning strikes, and children automatically begin to count — mississippi-one, mississippi-two, mississippi-three, and so on — and wait for the thunder to arrive. Dividing by five the number that is reached when the thunder is heard gives an estimate, in miles, of the distance of the lightning. Soon, this is not necessary, because the lightning and the thunder are almost simultaneous, and the earth shakes.
Then comes the wind, cold and damp and strong. It is heard before it is felt, for it hits the treetops first and shakes them mightily. Dead leaves blow loose. Within seconds, the first gust at ground level brings its supply of goose pimples. Time has come to think about going inside.
I do not know if there is a documented scientific phenomenon whereby thunder, by its very strength, causes rain to fall, but I think that there is such a phenomenon, documented or not. Pay attention next storm: loud, close thunder is followed by the rain getting harder, as if it were shaken loose.
Thunderstorms are dangerous, of course. People are killed or hurt by fallen wires or falling trees; my friend Jill, down in Texas, barely escaped with her life two years ago when she was struck by lightning — while she was standing in her kitchen. Of course, there are tornadoes. I’m told that one in the mid-1950s blew down a school near where I live, and they never got around to rebuilding it. I don’t know if this is true, but I hope it is.
What is missing from thunderstorms in the hill country is the pleasure of anticipation, of watching the storm build as the day gets hotter, knowing that the warmer the day the stronger the storm. Where I live, the storm is upon us almost before we know it’s coming — another reason to have a weather radio. My neighbors and I never get to measure the storm in its fullness because taller hills block the view. A powerful thunderstorm at a distance is a majestic sight.
We don’t miss the whole show, though, and lightning that hits in the bowl between the hills is a lot more spectacular than even very close lightning on the plains. Just now I had to jump up and rescue the basement screen door from a particularly powerful and sustained gust. So it’s not as if thunderstorms in the hills are boring.
And gee, in just a couple weeks summer will arrive, and thunderstorm season will really be upon us.
Dennis E. Powell is crackpot-at-large to Open for Business. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.