Lightning Strike

Man, was that close! Jackson and I were sitting here on the couch reading a book when the whole room went white, followed a split second later by a tremendous crash of thunder.

It scared the daylights out of me because I wasn't expecting it (it wasn't raining). Jackson on the other hand isn't afraid of anything; he looked at me and signed "more" as though I could create deafening thunder and blinding lightning on command (Since I am his dad, he probably does think that. That's pretty cool.).

Once my heart stopped pounding, I went to the back door to see if there was visible evidence of a strike, but I didn't see any smoldering trees or homes. I'm guessing it struck the high-voltage power lines that run beside and behind our property, but I wasn't going to venture any further to find out.

The scariest part, once I got to thinking about it, is that it didn't start raining until about 15 minutes after the strike. There had been no rumbles of thunder in the distance, no sudden rise in wind, nothing. Jackson and Rosie and I had been playing in the back yard and had come into the house about 20 minutes earlier, not because of the weather, but because Rosie was getting hungry.

The National Weather Service put out the following bulletin at 9:44 am:

* AT 944 AM EDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING PENNY SIZE HAIL...AND DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR STERLING...OR ABOUT NEAR LEOMINSTER...AND MOVING NORTHEAST AT 20 MPH.

* THE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WILL BE NEAR...
STERLING BY 1000 AM EDT...
LEOMINSTER BY 1005 AM EDT...
LANCASTER BY 1015 AM EDT...

Which would have been helpful, except that the strike here happened about 9:35.

Tags: Massachusetts Sterling Weather Lightning
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