Okay, it happened. And here is some comedy with the joke being on me. We were due for thunderstorms today which occurred. The thunder and lightning was light and the rain was fairly heavy. I was watching my favorite local weather satellite loop and the most powerful parts of the storm cell were skirting around my town as they have for quite some time. I mentioned in an earlier post that I would record any event in which a storm here was not tamed since installing my cb.
Then the sky to the west turned quite dark and the thunder and lightning increased in intensity. Soon there was no time between lightning and crashes of thunder; it was right overhead. So here I am out in a violent storm amongst the blueberry bushes… the wind whipping, sheets of rain falling, the deafening thunder and the lightning right over me while I am trying to point my cb into the storm.
The wind is tearing at my umbrella, I am soaked and I am laughing and swearing like an idiot, wondering if I am going to be struck by lightning any second while hanging onto the copper pipes of my cb. I hope one of the neighbors saw me for some good entertainment! I was feeling rather exhilarated at that point.
Then I couldn’t get my cb to stand upright again because I have the base partially buried in the ground for stability. When I leaned it to the western then northern horizon I disturbed the hole it was sitting in and had a terrible time trying to repair the hole so it would stay upright again.
I finally had to flee; the storm was so intense I decided it was time to head indoors but hoped my efforts were not in complete vain. Within moments of making it indoors the storm passed and all is calm again. Our rain guage has 1.8 inches of water in it from those two brief storms. That brings the total rainfall since the beginning of May to about 17 inches.
I did not stand out there long enough to see if my cb would punch a hole in the clouds. That remains to be seen in my experience so far.
Lately, my favorite satellite loop which I watch the storms on has stopped updating when storms are very near me. I wish they would knock off doing that. I am conducting experiments here and rely on good data from them but they are not cooperating in recent weeks.