Stormy weather

We had some serious storms last night.

Even though I've lived at high altitude before (in Colorado Springs), it didn't occur to me that living on the 23rd floor would be different during a storm than living on, say, the ground floor of a house or even second floor of an apartment.

Last night I woke up to a loud crackBoom. There was a serious storm going on- disco frequent light flashing followed by a splitting crackBoom which would then echo against the buildings. I felt like I was suspended over a canyon the way it echoed.

The rain had let up by the time we were leaving for work. The hour by hour forecast indicated that the next deluge would start well after we were in our buildings for work. Boy was that ever wrong! We were halfway to work when the already gray skies got ominously darker. I was just thinking that I should put up my umbrella, when the first big drops of rain started falling. It was a true deluge (some people who have never experienced the rains along the Gulf Coast sometimes call a little steady rain a deluge, but this was right up there with anything I've seen in the South). Our umbrella, though big enough for two, could not compete with the wind gusts that blew in one direction one moment and another the next. E caught a cab at Columbus circle, then I walked a block to the bus. I sat on the bus, my socks wet (despite my boots), my pants soaked from ankle to knee, my shirt more than damp, and thought about how nice it was to not have to drive in this kind of weather.