I love watching a good summer storm.
I’ve seen them from some pretty interesting places.
My favorite was from a cottage dug into the shore of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York.
My buddy and I watched a wall of rain make its way frame by frame across the water then to the shore and across the deck until it pelted the tin roof above our heads with one ping, followed by two, then three, then ten thousand all at once as it unleashed on us with surprising intensity.
We heard branches crashing all around us and wondered aloud how quickly it would pass (this was before smartphones).
After just a few minutes it was gone.
We felt like heroes dragging a fallen tree out of the road afterwards and barely considered what might’ve happened had it been any of the trees towering above the cottage where we watched.
I loved the intensity of Texas storms watched from my first-floor apartment’s patio in Austin. Wild flighting flashes would illuminate the courtyard pool at night as if it were the middle of the day.
I briefly had a private office on the top floor of one of New Haven, Connecticut’s tallest office buildings and will never forget the amazing storm I saw there. Lightning streaking across the horizon seemingly at face level; I felt the building swaying ever-so-slightly with each wind gust.
My client did not get their money’s worth out of me for that billable hour but the storm temporarily washed the icky feeling off of me from working in banking law.
As a child I once rode with my Mom and two brothers through the Florida everglades in a downpour and saw true panic in Mom who was scared to keep driving but even more scared of pulling to the side where we could just as easily be washed away.
I’m not sure if she was more worried about the gators or the drowning.
That one was a little intense for me.
The best summer storms are the ones witnessed with a feeling of safety but intense enough to make you feel like you’ve got a little skin in the game.
My current perch, in a house overlooking a reservoir where lightning cracks across the horizon backlighting the hills on the other side, is a pretty good one.
A good storm raises the hair on the back of your neck a few times but stops short of tensing up your shoulders.
It’s hearing the wind creak over the roof and rafters of your home without the force of a driving storm that makes you move away from glass windows.
There is a fine line between walking your property’s perimeter to look for sticks and branches or checking on downed wires and to see that everything’s still standing.
A good storm moves fast.
It’s not a wash out of a day where the kids sing “Rain rain go away,” or The Cat and the Hat comes for a visit.
It’s an intense energy burst where the clouds ripple with electricity and the thunder rolls in waves across the horizon, through your feet and up your spine.
You don’t merely hear the thunder, you feel it reverberate until the earth absorbs it and spits out it’s worms as a sacrifice to birds, the guardians of the skies.
That’s why birds singing are the universal sound of “all clear.”
My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter is starting to mirror my excitement for summer storms.
Thunder used to scare her but now she’s curious enough to come watch a storm fall on the reservoir through our bedroom floor to ceiling windows.
She sits on the shin-high window ledge commenting on everything she sees and jumps at each clap of thunder.
It’s all a show for her and hopefully never becomes true cause for alarm. No matter what she’s doing, she’s always game to join me when I ask her to stop and come watch a summer storm with me.
I look forward to her someday being comfortable enough to come out with me to the garage or underneath our covered gazebo to feel the changes in the atmosphere itself.
Life is full of so many twists, turns, and challenges right now that it’s easy to view a common summer storm as one of them and reach for your favorite streaming app or distraction when your plans get upended.
Especially if you live in the northeast this summer where we’re getting them nearly every day.
But if you have the time, stop and watch a storm roll in this summer. You just might find a pretty good show that you can’t go back to binge later.
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