Tempting fate

[daytime dave]

As I type this, the sky is getting blacker and the thunder is growing louder. It's been thundering for about 25 minutes here and so far no lightning or rain. The temperature is coming down slowly and the humidity is matching.

Does anyone else like to sit outside as long as possible in a thunder storm? I always have. One of my favorite smells is the air after a very close lightning strike. ( I also enjoy the smell of petroleum products too. ) I have always sat on a covered porch and watched storms come in, hover and pass by. Once the deck is too much, I will move to my covered porch and watch and listen.

Just wondering .....................and sharing the weather.

[North Country Gal]

Sometimes, yes and some times, no. When I was growing up in Nebraska and could see storms approaching from long distances, I had to watch for tornadoes at times. I did see a couple in those years, but they passed me by. Saw some really incredible thunder storms, too. Even had a close call with softball size hail.

Now that we live in the north woods with all the trees, it's hard to see any approaching storm. We usually hear it before it arrives. The good news is that tornadoes are rare, up here, and although we've had some strong t storms, really nothing to compare to some of them I experienced out on the prairie.

[Ernie]

Don't do it as much anymore but I have enjoyed the spectacle myself.

[Sir Henry]

I also enjoy storms and especially the rain on a tin roof.

[CT_Shooter]

I enjoy the sound of thunder, the smell of clean rain, and bright streaks of lightning in dark clouds, though I prefer it be through screened-in doors or windows and only when the wind isn't threatening. The best T-Storms are pop-ups on hot, steamy summer days that deliver the drama but don't overstay their welcome. We were promised one this afternoon, but it never happened. Maybe tomorrow.

[markiver54]

I share your enjoyment as described.

[rickhem]

Back in the late 70s, and early 80s I worked for a big pharma company in NJ. I turned shifts every week and that meant a lot of time working 3rd shift. This company had a big, 14 story building, with an all-glass exterior. When it was thunderstorming at night, I'd go down to that building, buy a soda and a candy bar from a vending machine, and take an elevator up to the 14th floor to watch the storm for a while. Great view from up there, and there was a couple other guys that worked other places in the company that also did this. Don't know who they were or where they worked, but we all liked watching the storms.

That smell after lightning is ozone. It's formed frequently after an electrical discharge, a spark. Remember the smell from running your model trains? Same thing. Years later at that same pharma company, I had a project that included a phase of our process that used ozone to complete a reaction. Technically, an ozonolysis, and we had a special transformer that would generate the ozone. Ozone is an extremely powerful oxidizer, three oxygen atoms, so the tubing we used to carry the ozone into the reactor would have to get changed out every run, it would get brittle and crack apart. I will say that the lab always had that nice smell when we ran those reactions.

[GunnyGene]

Maria, from the movie "Paint your wagon".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm3nlM9piHk

[Hatchdog]

Absolutely. Love to be outside under cover watching a lightning storm. Only once did my wife and I get really shook. About six years ago we had a storm and went outside under cover to watch. The storm was so intense it scared us terribly and we went inside. It rained so hard that the water coming off the roof ran right past the rain gutters and just poured down in sheets. The next day we discovered our roadside ditches in parts of the community washed out and we had a big repair job.

Still we will run outside when thunder roars. (So much for “go indoors”)

[BrokenolMarine]

I was stationed in a Search and Rescue Squadron on the Windward Side of Oahu in the early 80s at Kaneohe Marine Base. It rained "Nearly" every day, sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes most of the day. That made the windward side lush and tropical. When you drove thru the tunnel on the Likelike Highway and emerged from the Leeward side there was a physical change in the view. (That highway is pronounced Leeky Leeky, not Like Like) Just so you know.

You could always tell the tourists and folks new to the island when the rains came across the water to the beach or the park, you could see the dark rain coming like a wall. The newbies and the tourists would grab their stuff and run for the cars or the covered shelters... the locals and the folks who had been on the island for a while would cover their plates or lay something over the boom box and wait, turn their faces up to the cooling rain. Showers would pass over, and then sun would come back out, most of the time. Surfers would ride the waves to the beach and lay on the beach and watch the rain IF there was lightening. If not, they wouldn't even stop surfing. "Hey, we already wet brah."

I too, love the smell of the rain, and the crack of the lightening and the smell it brings. Sometimes when you go out and watch the approaching storm, you get lucky.

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[The Wiz]

Did so a couple nites ago.