This will probably come out very long when written, but it was quite an experience…
Tuesday nights we play softball in Boulder. After our game (in which we kicked major butt by winning 19-2) Noah and I hung around for quite a while afterwards talking with Stanley & Melina. While chatting, Melina notices so lightening off in the distance. No big deal, that happens all the time around here. We continue to talk. We all notice a few more flashes, count the distance between the flash and the thunder and determine the storm is about 8-10 miles away. We continue to stand around and gab. Meanwhile, the storm moves closer, 6 miles, 4 miles, 2 miles…you get the picture. Then, without warning, it’s ontop of us. Well, not really without warning, we did know it was getting closer. A huge bolt of lightening blasts to the ground about 1 miles from us, followed by a couple more really close blots and extremely angry thunder. The ump calls the game that’s going on behind us in the 3rd inning. We decide at that point that we should all go home.
The four of us start walking towards our respective vehicles as the rain starts to fall in drops the size of quarters. We walk a little faster. By the time we were to the parking lot it was almost a torrential downpour. Thankfully, I had our keys handy and we jumped in the car while hearing Melina yell to Stan, “Where are the keys?!” Poor guys. We got in the car right before the hail started to fall. Woo! Being caught outside in a hailstorm is NOT fun. We head off towards home. Neither us or the other couple live in Boulder. We live about 15 miles away and Stan & Melina are probably around 30. Of course the road we take goes through ranches and has no street lights (well, all the roads that go to Lafayette from Boulder are like that).
As I’m driving the rain is coming down in sheets intermixed with hail. Thankfully the hail was small, hard, but small, so no damage done to the car. The lightening was striking the ground all around us. It’s a good thing that being in a car is one of the safest places you can be during such a storm. Because of the snow, the roads do not have raised reflectors, but instead use a semi-reflective paint. However, the rain was so thick and blowing around us probably at like 50 mph that it was EXTREMELY hard to see the lines, Noah helped as my navigator in that respect. The drive home, I think, was the longest in history! I was so tense while driving, trying to see where I was going and not drive off the road or into another vehicle. Using highbeams was not an option due to the intensity of the rain, they created too much glare. So, one good thing I have to say for the lightening was that it was very productive and illuminating the road in an eerie blue blast of light. Not comforting mind you when you see it hit the ground in the field on the other side of the road. When we finally made it home the storm was still directly over us, this HUGE blob of red (if you know radar readings you understand the RED).
There was so much rain our gutters could not handle the massive influx of water. Granted, I’m sure there is a mass amount of cotton fuzz in the gutters too, but it was A LOT of rain. We made it inside (thank goodness we always park in the garage!) and I checked the rain gage. By the time the storm was over we had almost 1-inch of rain! Oy! Of course, anytime we come home Lava needs to go out, but she would not go outside because the sounds of the storm were too frightening for her. It doesn’t bother her when she’s inside, but with the door open she kind of freaked. We wanted her to just pee on the patio and we’d clean it up, but she wouldn’t even go out there. Finally Noah got her to go outside and get soaked while he stood under an umbrella. I stayed inside to unwind from the oober stressful drive.
The rain finally let up but the intense lightening and thunder stuck around for quite a while. Normally all those really fun storms bypass Lafayette by traveling to the North or South or even developing East of us, but this blob formed over Boulder as it came over the mountains and headed South East…towards Lafayette…the same direction we were headed. Oy! What an experience! What a night!