If the world ends in thunder and rain...

[layla]

I'm getting opinionated in my old age ... I basically spent three hours writing what amounts to a manifesto last night on one particular topic that I have strong opinions about ... then decided not to post it here. At least not at the moment. I should probably go through, tone it down and make it more about the logic and less about the DANG THAT PISSED ME OFF.

But this I have to write about. We had a thunderstorm at sunset last night (sunset for us being about 11:30 at night right now) and OH MY GOD. I can't do justice to it in words, and I tried taking pictures but the pictures didn't show the grandeur at all, either. It started with a cloudburst while I was upstairs writing my manifesto. The door was open and the house smelled like rain. After the rain stopped, I came downstairs to enjoy the rainsmell some more, and that's when I noticed the weird quality of the light outside. It was strange, flat, omnidirectional, and yellow -- like somebody had put a yellow filter over the lens of the world.

I looked out the door and WOW. The sun was setting in the north -- as it does -- and the entire southern sky was filled with clouds that were lit up gold. I mean, the whole southern sky -- it was this rich, deep yellow-gold, and as if that wasn't enough, there was a huge double rainbow ringing the gold part, a very bright inner rainbow and a fainter outer rainbow. Walking out into the yard, I found that you could see the full ring of the rainbow until it grounded in the hills. And all around the gold part of the sky, the clouds were dark rich blue-gray with golden streamers falling from them. It was just ... wow. Orion and I must have spent an hour out there looking at the sky, even when we got another downpour on top of us. (Which was, by the way, very cold.)

That was really one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Comments

[jammielynn.livejournal.com]

it certainly was beautiful from my house in goldstream. i didn't see the rainbows, but the colours in the sky were awesome. and i love the smell of rain. unfortunately, i was outside only because one of my dogs is terribly afraid of storms and he was hurting himself breaking his house and all... but it did allow me the opportunity to look up into the sky as i grabbed his collar and guided him into the house for the night.
good thing i didn't go to bed early.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Poor dog! Two of mine hid under the bed during the storm ... but the funny thing is that Lucky, who is scared of EVERYTHING (such as ... babies, other dogs, new pieces of furniture) went out in the rain with me and seemed to be enjoying himself. He'd get a little nervous when the thunder would peal, but it didn't terrify him like it did the others.

[acoustic-rob.livejournal.com]

Back when I lived in Urbana Laura and I went to the supermarket just after an afternoon rainstorm...and when we got there the *entire* sky (covered with clouds except for a break at the horizon) was glowing bright orange as the clouds caught the sunset at *just* the right angle. It was amazing...we just stood there in the middle of the parking lot and gawped.