[En]Light[e]ning

Tuesday I made it home early from work. Shortly after I arrived at home a mild, afternoon thunderstorm rumbled into town.

We went out onto our covered front porch to watch the rain fall. The sun was shining from somewhere, so I told the kids to look for a rainbow. The thunder wasn't too loud, so it was quite nice to be outside.

Off in the distance we saw a pitchfork-shaped bolt of lightning stab down towards earth. A few seconds later we heard the thunder. I briefly explained to the kids how you can tell how close the lightning is by the time. This bolt was probably about five miles away.

The rain was really coming down now, the kids reached out trying to catch raindrops.

Then another cloud-to-ground... this one about a mile away. Hmm, that one was a little louder. Whoo hoo, that was fun! Keep looking for that rainbow!!

Then the world went white. It wasn't so much a Flash-Boom as it was a Fla-BOOM. I don't know where the lightning struck, but it was close, it was loud, and it caught the kids off guard. Ironically, neither the blinding flash of lightning nor the deafening thunder seemed to scare them. What scared them were the two neighboring car alarms that were sounding sirens, beeps and buzzes as a result of the thunderclap.

We decided at that point to go indoors.