Flashes of Panic

I didn’t get the results at work. They were running late in Athens and there were ominous clouds and rumblings out my window, so I got on the bike and started cranking for home.

I stopped briefly at the top of the East Plumtree hill to look west towards Whately, but you couldn’t see it. It looked like the looming clouds had touched down near the river, obscuring everything beyond Sunderland and North Hadley. Definitely not a rainstorm I wanted to be riding a bike in, so I started sprinting down towards Amherst.

I made it to North Amherst before it started sprinkling, but the wind was pretty fierce. The cars on the road were slowing down as we passed Cowls sawmill, because the whirling dust blown off the mill yard looked like a small tornado. By the time I reached the light I had seen two branches blown down on the road in front of me, and I was pretty thoroughly drenched. Coming away from the light, I caught a tailwind and was up in the top gear before I was expecting to be. By the time I reached UMass it was barely sprinkling. Downtown, everything looked dry, and it didn’t rain all evening.

I woke up around 2:30 this morning to the sound of a downpour, and regular thunder. The lightning and thunder were coming so close together that you couldn’t match flashes to rumbles; it just flickered and banged, more or less constantly. I think I can safely say I’ve never seen so many flashes so close together for so long.

The rain has been tapering off, then picking up in squalls, ever since then, but whatever massive electric potentials got built up last night appear to have been discharged.