On thunderstorms and lightning striking cigar-smoking d-bags

I realize I’m hardly the first person to write about their love of thunderstorms.  Undoubtedly, somewhere in a dark cave, undiscovered by modern man, there is a pictograph among the hand-drawn herds of buffalo, showing a heart and a lightning bolt.  I bet that Thor, the Norse god of thunder, had all kinds of storm groupies.  I’m sure that if the necessary meteorological conditions were present (it was summer, after all), the founding fathers of the United States even took a break from drafting the Declaration of Independence to gaze at the storm.  You could almost picture the honorable Stephen Hopkins, nine-time governor of Rhode Island, pausing mid-signature and whispering in awe, “Dude, check out that thunder.  Wicked cool.”  (Rhode Islanders say, wicked, right?).

I remember one particularly stormy morning in 11^th grade American Literature and Composition class, as Mrs. Carman took note of how her class collectively gazed out the window during her lecture.  Pausing just long enough for everyone’s eyes to drift back over to her, she asked, “Don’t you just love rainy days?  They’re perfect for curling up with a good book…or making out.”  Just as we had collectively watched the rain outside, we collectively were totally grossed out.

The thunderstorms I experienced in Montana were much different than those in the southern United States.  In Georgia and Florida, thunderstorms occur nearly every hot and steamy summer afternoon.  The humid air gets even thicker before the sky gets angry, turning black before unleashing one enormous bone-shaking thunder clap, at which point a torrential downpour would follow…for about six minutes.  Then it was hot and sunny again!

Montana was different.  Sure, we had afternoon thunderstorms in summer, but, for one, our afternoon started at about 6pm.  Being at such a high latitude, our summer days were so long – it usually wasn’t “dark” until after 10pm.  This totally throws off your perception of the day; I ended up eating more on summer days because I was awake for so many hours.

Actually, that’s not entirely the whole summer, that I ate more in summer.  I ate a lot in the winter, too.  I never could drive in snow and I was too chicken to participate in winter sports – skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling (if that could be considered a sport) are all too high adrenaline for me.  So, I had few options other than hang out and eat and drink until the spring thaw.  Good times.

Surprisingly, my seasonal eating habits are related to the topic at hand.  In Montana, we received the bulk of our precipitation in the winter in the form of snow.  Summers were notably moisture-free.  So, when our thunderstorms rolled in, they were just that – storms with roaring wind, deafening thunder, and blinding lightning.  These storms were dreaded, not just because my dog, for lack of better wording, flips the fuck out during storms, but because each lightning strike spotted in the five valleys meant a new forest fire.  Since rain seldom accompanied these storms, the fires just raged, incinerating all the dry fuel the forest had to offer.  These fires would grow and grow and, sometimes, they’d meet forming one mammoth bitch of a fire.  This is how the “Big Blowup” of the northwest wildfires of 1910 formed (I’m pretty sure that if you dig into forest service archives, they, too, call the 1910 fire “one mammoth bitch”).  This fire burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana and Washington in two days, and was so huge that its light-smothering smoke and ash drifted cross-country, warranting New York City to turn on its streetlamps in the middle of the day.  Only a late summer snowfall slowed the fire down enough so that it could be extinguished.

Like giant fires, I also don’t appreciate late summer snowfalls, which is one reason I left Montana.

Here in Grand Cayman, our thunderstorms are like those that I recall from Georgia and Florida.  Here, though, we get to watch the progress of storms that never actually affect us.  Just today, I sat at the bar and watched a heavy black cloud linger over Georgetown to the south.  I think Georgetown always seems to get the nasty weather because it juts out into the Caribbean Sea – when storms come up from the south, they batter Georgetown before dissipating.  I find this humorous because Georgetown is the port for all the big cruise ships.  I wonder if many of the summer cruise ship people (what’s the word I’m looking for…ah, tourists) are even able to get off their ships so they can explore he wondrous wilds and splendor of Georgetown’s numerous duty-free jewelry stores.

Today’s storm was typical in that it seemed to roar over Georgetown, while it was sunny further up Seven Mile Beach at Calico Jack’s.  As I sipped my Strongbow and watched folks much more fit than I, a massive knock-you-off-your-barstool clap of thunder tore through the Sunday afternoon calm.  People enjoying the beach paused briefly, applauded the thunder, and then continued about their business.  We’re not in Georgetown – nothing can hurt us all the way up here!

The next ten minutes brought more random thunder and scary lightning strikes in the distance.  Well, I only found one of the strikes particularly frightening because I watched it strike my place of employment, and I kinda need this job.  Even as the thunder thundered and the lightning…lightninged, everyone on the beach kept doing their thing.    The volleyball players didn’t miss a serve, little kids frolicking near the shore continued to try their parents patience, and people just chilling on picnic tables continued to be cool.  The only people I saw change their behavior was a table of frat-lookin’ dudes sucking on stogies.  Smart dudes that they were moved from their table near the volleyball net to one with a nice tall, metal umbrella.  Smart move, dudes, smart move.  But, just as the storm seemed like it could affect us, just as itty bitty droplets of rain freckled my skin, I watched the giant gray mass move northwesterly over the Caribbean Sea.  It’s too bad that’s what nearly all the storms do – lightning strikes have such great potential for thinning the herd.  Perhaps that’s why I like storms so much…