Riders on the Storm

Not much is happening. And so I’ll talk about the weather.

We had a thunderstorm last night; it may have escaped your attention if you don’t live in Beirut, but you couldn’t have slept through this one. What am I saying; you could practically read a book with the lightning! It is my favorite weather at night; thunderstorms.

When thunderstorms are right overhead, it triggers all the car alarms in the entire city. A thunderstorm last week was so loud it set off the fire alarm at work, and everyone had to evacuate the building in the pouring rain. All the office ladies tried to shield their helmet-hair do’s with their handbags, in fear of disintegration, but as the handbag fashion calls for little bags in Beirut, that didn’t do much good. It was pretty funny to see.

6:00 in the morning. With a little imagination you can see the lightning bolts in the north (left side of the picture)

Last night’s thunderstorm was some four kilometers north of us. That’s one thing that stuck from elementary school; every three seconds between lightning and thunder equals one kilometer. (Don’t you do the counting?)

A couple of years ago we got a direct hit into the building, and TV’s blew up on three different floors. I’ve heard from plenty of people who’s computers ceased to operate, or their network cards fried, and so I unplug the appliances. Sounds simple, but you’ve got to do it in the middle of the night, and you also have to drag in the laundry, take all balcony furniture pillows inside and push in the cage with the squirrels and the dog house under the awning, otherwise they’ll have drowned the next morning.
Well, maybe not drowned, but the amount of water that comes down is impressive. I had never heard of this excuse in Holland, but ‘my house was flooding’ is one that I’ve heard often here. It has happened to me a number of times. When I moved into an apartment, no one told me I should keep the drain covers on the balcony clear. I learned though. I remember waking up and seeing a tennis shoe floating by. That definitely was the most surreal thing ever.

The edge of the thunder clouds

Thunderstorms in Holland are dull affairs. Four lightning bolts, some rumbling, usually more than eight kilometers away, a bit of rain, and it’s over before you know it. The land is flat and they drift away quickly.

Here in Beirut thunderstorms can go on for 24 hours or more. Imagine 'Riders on the Storm'. They come in from the sea and get stuck in front of the mountains, so they hang, and they thunder and light, until they are completely discharged. Or slowly drift northwards. Or to the south.

Can you see nothing is happening these days? An entire post about the weather.