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And The Thunder Rolls

We didn't have thunder or lightning in Hawaii.  Despite the fact that it rains every day, it does so gently, with no fuss or noise.  We have only once in the past three and a half years seen lightning.  It was such an unusual phenomenon that we had local friends who drove out closer to the storm to sit in the back of their truck and watch the lightning like it was a fireworks show.

Now we are back in the land of thunder, lightning, hail and tornadoes.

Yay.

There was a thunderstorm last night that started around dinner time and kept booming until 2:00 this morning.  Ringo spent all evening huddled in the laundry room.  Rigger, who is usually mellow to the point of being a liquid, was lying on the rug when the thunder boomed the first time.  He jumped up and tried to run through the house, but it was like watching a cartoon character run in place.  He just couldn't get his legs up under him and frankly, there was nowhere to go.

The thunder kept booming all night.  Oh my gosh, the number of times I woke up thinking the roof was falling in on us.  And the number of times I checked my phone to see if a tornado was on its way.  And the number of times the power flickered and my phone beeped and lit up.

Today will be a nap day.

I had to go meet Kerry at the commissary yesterday and got caught in a hail storm.  I was circling the commissary parking lot when something whacked the windshield and the roof really hard.  I thought someone had thrown something at me when I saw ice bouncing off the parking lot and people fleeing for the building.  It's a bad feeling to have ice pelting down on your car and there is no place to take it to keep it from getting damaged.  Luckily it only lasted a few minutes and the van appears to be unscathed.

Illinois weather.  Feh.

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