How could a storm like this one, only a few miles from Manhattan, with enough wind and lightning to wake me up at 1:00 a.m., still not drop any rain on us? I was sound asleep, but startled wide awake to howling wind and rattling screens. Our bedroom was lit up by almost continuous lightning flashes. The entire line of storms was coming straight at us, west to east, bearing down quickly. Oh, Joy!
But I knew something was wrong. There were no watches or warnings on the local TV channels; a bad omen because these days the weather people seem to panic at every drizzle. The lightning was abundant, but was what we oldtimers call "heat" lightning; flashes of lightning high in the atmosphere without any accompanying thunder to scare the children. All this fury and force, probably creating rain that was evaporating before it could reach the ground. Curses.
We've seen no rain from mid-June through August 9th, almost two entire months during our hottest time of year. On the positive side, I hadn't mowed my yard since July 1st. On the negative side, the roses are not very prolific right now and things are drying up before their time. We did have a brief respite on the weekend of August 10th, with a total of 1.9 inches of rain over three days. That momentarily filled in the cracks and resulted in me having to mow down the weeds in the grass on August 17th. But we're already dry again and the next few days are forecast to hit the 100's.
Please be warned. I promise you that the next time I see something like this on radar, day or night, I'm going to do everything possible to see that it rains. I'll rush out to water the hopeless lawn, I'll spray the weeds with weedkiller, and I'll quickly have the car washed and then leave it out to be rained on. Heck, if the clouds form nearby but I see them start to move, I'm going to run out naked and do a rain dance. Surely it won't come to that, but desperate times call for drastic measures. You might want to drive by my house with blinders on for a bit, just in case.
Maybe I could send you some ? We have rain to spare here, in fact, the ground is sodden which is unusual even for the UK. It is also cold and autumnal. I feel your rainless pain, especially as your roses are struggling to bloom.
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