Autumn

Autumn may not officially start until September 23rd this year, but from the feel of the weather I'm going to say that this happy season is already making itself known in the Northwest. And given that we broke a couple heat records this summer, I'm quite relieved.

It started with a thunderstorm early Saturday morning, about the time that you aren't sure if it's really Saturday morning or if it's still Friday night. It's exactly when most people ought to be asleep, and that's the state I wanted to be in, but due to a virus I couldn't sleep or stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. Since I was already awake, and I figured that further attempts at sleep were pointless while a storm was raging, I wrapped myself up in a favorite quilt to watch it.

We rarely get thunderstorms like that in Oregon. Yes we get thunderstorms, but they're usually smaller, so although I wished I were awake for different reasons I was happy to be able to watch. And the rain, oh dang, after so much dry weather it was nice to hear the rain pouring down. I watched as the lightning lit up the clouds, noticing that I never actually saw the lightning itself. If you haven't seen it before, imagine looking up in the dark of night and suddenly seeing the clouds flash with a bright light. It was beautiful.

Sometime after I got to see a second thunderstorm cell sweep through the area (it surprised me to realize this storm had multiple cells) I eventually got to sleep. The next day as I looked outside, I saw the wind blowing leaves off a tree.

The season is turning, it's getting cooler, and I'm quite happy with that.

Lightning Dancing Across Sky

Not what the storm looked like, but I doubt many photographers consider shots of glowing clouds exciting.