Category Archives: Weather

Scattered thunderstorms almost every day right now in northern Vermont – lots of great clouds, some spectacular, but little if any actual rain right where we happen to be. But when it does rain, it really pours.

Our attitudes toward the weather have similarities to our attitudes toward life – it’s changing constantly, sometimes calm, often threatening, occasionally stormy. Anticipating and preparing for the really bad parts takes up so much of our time, but the actual really bad parts are rare and short-lived. There’s a rainbow after the storm passes.

In my case, I prefer the stormy weather to the calm. Okay, I’m not 100% sure the analogy holds that far, but I’m intrigued by the possibility.

We had thunderstorms popping up all over northern New York and Vermont yesterday, with a 60% chance of getting them here. But we had nothing but sunshine and humidity throughout the day.

Finally as sunset got near, a few cumulus started building to our south and west, heading our way.

After dark, I worked scanning pictures in my TV-less and internet-less abode, I kept the porch door open, listening for approaching thunder. I heard nothing and figured that we had been missed again. Apparently the weather gods had been talking to the television gods and the internet gods and conspiring against me.

But when I went to bed and turned off the lights, I found that the sky was repeatedly lighting up with cloud-to-cloud thunder, some of it quite bright. I ended up staying up another hour to watch, but never heard thunder at all. It wasn’t like it was noisy – out in the boonies of northern Vermont, outside the town, I could still here a train whistle from four or five miles away in the valley, and other odd sounds of the night were drifting by. But no thunder, no matter how close or how bright the flashes seemed.

Lots of fury – no sound to go with it.

We’ll just have to make do with what we have. This trip is getting very zen.