The 10-Year Rewind – Part 8 – Stormy Intervals

Every day this month I am looking back on the 10 years since I started this blog in June, 2008. Part 8 is this one — Stormy Intervals — from March 2009. I just had to include at least one posting about rain in Sydney ... where would our garden be without the regular (if sometimes temperamental) assistance of Huey the Rain God?

I love a good storm, but then again that's because I don't live in Tornado Alley in America's midwest, or in the Caribbean, or in tropical Australia, where hurricanes put another factor of 10 on top of what I consider to be a good storm. I guess people in those parts of the world could do without pop-gun storm-lovers like me. But that doesn't stop me liking a good, quick little Sydney storm. We had one pass through late yesterday, and it gave the garden a lovely, deep drink without doing a lot of damage.

While we can cop storms here from all sorts of directions, the south-west is the most reliable point of entry, and here's our little storm approaching late in the afternoon.

I'm a weather radar addict when storms approach. My part of the world is closest to the area marked Sydney Ap (airport) on the mid-section of coast. The yellow bit in the radar image contains the heaviest rain – and all the lightning – and it passed straight overhead.

Only minutes away now and the dark cloudy bits look perfectly primed for a large, judgmental hand to reach down and smite someone. Alas, nothing of the sort happened and instead large blobs of water splattered down slowly, the advanced guard of the assault suggesting that it'd be a great idea for all boys with cameras to go inside now.

The front path becomes shiny, the thirsty hedges say 'thanks' for the drink and the wash-down, and moments later the real fun begins.

Within 30 seconds the rain changes from blobs to streams to grey torrents; gutters become rivers and strong trees sag under the weight of water.

Out the back of the house the pergola springs a leak where it attaches to the house and water starts streaming down the glass blocks that form part of our back wall. "Will you please stop taking photos and help mop up the water?" says someone far more sensible than me, as she lays towels against the back door, to stop the seepage getting in. You always know when it's really raining hard here, our leaky pergola lets us know.

Two really close lightning strikes this time round, one just across the road. What a terrifying, loud, violent sound close lightning is. Yet, 20 minutes later and it's all over. The street tree glistens after its wash and picks it head up, shaking its leaves free of water in the breezes, just like a wet dog.

The only 'damage' to speak of is pair of the potted, scented-leaf pelargoniums, which were due for a trim tomorrow anyway, as they've grown too lush and a bit too big for their pots. The intensity of the rain and the weight of the wet foliage has bent them over. A bit of remedial trimming, and maybe a bit of tying a staking behind the scenes, should attend to their immediate needs. 

Just a bit under one inch (25mm) of rain in 20 minutes is the harvest, a wonderful gift for the garden. March is meant to be our wettest month, with 131mm of rain on average, and so far we've had just 30mm of rain by the 14th.( A second storm later last night added another 15mm of rain, so the soil is much happier now.)

That was just a playful, helpful little 20-minute storm. I can't imagine what a hurricane would be like. I hope I never experience one, quite frankly. Nor a tornado. But as for our late-summer/early autumn temperate storms, they're common enough, and occasionally quite deadly if you're in the path of a falling tree, or taking shelter under one when lightning strikes (and these things do happen) but most of the time they're just a bath for the garden and a reminder that nature, in its fury, is the most powerful thing on Earth. 

The Weather Report

So far this trip we have been so blessed with the weather that there hasn't really been a lot of weather, if you know what I mean. Just sunny, with the only variations being between warm, hot or very hot. Oh, well, it did pour with rain for one day back in Hilo, Hawaii, but it always rains in Hilo. Today, travelling south from Lubbock to our half-way point to Austin, a nice mid-sized (pop. 100,000) Texas town called San Angelo, we enjoyed a stack of weather along the way, and as we got through it all unscathed, we can happily tell you that it was fun out there. Here's how it unfolded...

Texas is enduring one of its worst droughts in a long time, hence all those bushfires you've been reading about in the news. Any rain is welcome, and they need lots of it to break the drought. But I don't need to explain this to Aussies. We all know about droughts. And so as we headed south from Lubbock, the long, straight and very flat roads offered up a series of thunderclouds such as this picturesque one. As the day wore on cute little lightning bolts flashed down, tickling the ground.

As the miles ground by and the thunderclouds formed, the horizon grew progressively murkier, until the committee of two in our car agreed that there was a dust storm up ahead. Oh joy! Sydneysiders will all remember the great dust storm of September 2009, which I blogged about here. We were going to drive through a dust storm, oh great.

And so we ploughed on into the murk, with Pam heroically snapping away within the car of course (she got some great shots of wet and grimy windscreens!) but with the wipers and washers working away she managed to capture some of the action quite well.

It was quite incredible to be within a thunderstorm (don't worry, the lightning wasn't remotely close) and a dust storm at the same time. Every now and then, by some very strange quirk of clouds, dust and wind, a hole in the sky above would allow in a shaft of sunlight to turn the dust into a glowing spotlight of orange. Mother Nature is just unmatchable down the awesome end of beauty.

Uh oh... what's that? We nervously reassured ourselves that this was no more than a willy willy, a dust devil, one of those little swirling, dusty mischief-makers of the plains, and that's what it turned out to be. But seeing it for the first time was a worrying thrill because it was, for a willy willy (...gulp) a big one. Don't break down, nice little Mazda, just keep on chugging through it all. And the Mazda did its duty.

Much more suddenly than it began, it was all over. It was as if we had burst through a brown curtain into sunnyland again. One moment rain and dust, the next brilliant sunshine, fair-weather fluffy cotton clouds and "what storm?".

We're loving Texas. Out here in West Texas the plains are as flat and wide as any Australian plain (think the Nullarbor or the Hay Plain) and the sky above feels enormous. It really is Big Sky Country.

Tomorrow we'll tell you a bit more about the town we're in again tonight, San Angelo. It's a great spot. Last night we headed out for the Sealy Flats Diner, a spot we knew nothing much about at all (the guy on the motel counter recommended it). Turns out it was a very cool blues bar and diner, lots of friendly people there, and though we were stupid enough to not take our camera with us, at least I did find a You Tube video (not the best quality, mind you) of the band we saw last night playing here at Sealy Flats, working up a storm on stage. And so I'll conclude this weather report with the Jimmy Rose band, live at Sealy Flats, San Angelo.