Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

We had the mother of all storms last night. Quite possibly the Auntie and Uncle, too. There was a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch for our area, so I was expecting something gross to creep in, but I was unprepared for how bad it would be. At about 6:30, I went outside with the dog. I stood on the porch while she motored around the yard, and watched the puffy white clouds to the south. They were big and billowy and not at all harmful looking. Besides, they were moving away from me.

Then, I turned around to go back inside. (Cue the Eeevil Emperor’s theme song from Star Wars.) The shelf cloud (which looked not entirely unlike this) of the oncoming storm had crept up from the north and was silently advancing. Sweet fancy Jeebus! The wind had been howling, but it suddenly got very quiet. I ran inside, put on my shoes, and drove next door. Far better to be sucked up in a tornado if you have company, right?

So, I cut out UPC codes from bags of dog and cat food for my neighbor while we watched teevee. By the time Jeopardy was over, the worst of the storm had passed. It was super slow moving, though. I’ve never seen a storm creep along that slowly. Or move in such an odd direction. It came in from due north, and exited to due east. Very weird!

Anyway, we didn’t get a tornado. We did get front row seats to one of the most spectacular light shows EVAR, though. There were some ground strikes, but most of it was cloud-to-cloud. The latter were gorgeous. Portions of the clouds would glow red, yellow, blue, or green. There were also quite a few pulsing zaps of lightning that would dart around the cloud, like little tadpoles in water.

Some of the larger, more prolonged lightning strikes illuminated the mammatus clouds on the back side of the storm. I wish it had been light out, because I would’ve liked to’ve photographed them.

The show lasted over three hours. When I went to bed at 11pm, I could still see a thin band of clouds on the eastern horizon, lit up with pops and crackles of lightning.