Summer Storms

When I began to grow vegetables in 2003 I took a spiral notebook and wrote a date on each sheet, beginning with April 1 and started keeping a "garden journal."  The idea was to remind myself of what had worked well that year and what needed to be changed when I started the next season of gardening.  Each day I wrote down the low temperature, the day's high, weather occurrences, plantings and harvests.  I don't write on each date, but usually get something down about the day.

On yesterday's date, July 18, I wrote something on all but one year since then.  Of those eight years, there were five that saw a thunderstorm on that date.  Yesterday was no exception.  We had a storm with oodles of lightning that got us up between 3 and 3:30 a.m.  Then in the evening we had another storm that looked pretty severe on the radar as it started south and west of us.  I kept a lookout, and took some pictures as it approached, went through, and then left us on its way east and north.

Here's the approaching storm, coming in from the west, taken in two shots, one the southern part and the other the northern end.

I tried to get these to stay side by side, but they are just too big to do that, and I don't want to make them smaller.










There was lots of lightning and rumbling thunder.  I watched the bottom of the clouds with concern, since tornadoes are possible here, although there was no tornado watch announced by the weather department.

Next is a video of the storm in progress as it swept by, bending trees and swirling leaves as it went.

This is my first try at posting a video, so I hope this works!

There's a funny little bit at the end in which the camera goes upside down.  Sorry about that!  I was trying to take a "portrait"  rather than a "landscape" oriented shot.

And here's the back of the storm lit by
the almost-setting sun in a majestic
way.

And, finally, the peaceful western sky just after sunset, about 9:40 p.m.







I love the sky here.  We see the horizon almost 360º, our view blocked only by our garden centre buildings to the south, by the ridge of land about a half mile to the east, a ridge of land about 12 miles to the west, and the hills a mile and half to the north.  That gives us a lot of sky to look at, and we can often see two or three weather "happenings" at once.