Stormy Weather

Living in the desert, it's easy to forget what "normal" weather is like. Sure, I don't live in the DESERT desert, like other people, and there are plants and trees and greenery around. But the weather, while mostly nice, can be downright depressing on occasions.

In winter, it's very pleasant, nice temperatures and the odd cloudy days perfect for going to the beach, every so often a windy day and occasionally a sudden dust storm will blow up out of nowhere. Those can be quite scary! During summer it's about 5 months on endless furnace temps (50'C is not uncommon) and the wind only makes it worse...

One thing I do miss living here is rain. Sure, at the time I used to moan about how annoying it was, getting from my car to the house and car to work and getting soaked. But I do love lying in bed & listening to the rain fall, it's soothing. I also love how the air smells after rain, it's fresh and earthy, like eveything is clean.

The other day a friend & I were talking about this exact thing actually, how nice it is to be snuggled up under the covers & listening to the rain on the roof. The weather forecast said there was supposed to be some rain the next day. We pooh-poohed it as probably coming to nothing like most rain showers here. I commented how I really missed the rain and how nice it would be to be able to do just that, hide under the doona while the rain comes down.

Funnily enough, about 30mins later I got a text from said friend telling me that at their place it has just started bucketing down rain, and was it raining at my house yet? It was starting to drizzle a little bit by this time, so I went downstairs. All of a sudden it was like someone turned on the tap- water coming down in sheets, thunder and lightning (very very frightening, haha) It was GREAT!!!

I stood in front of my building under the eave, still getting partly soaked but loving that we were in the middle of a storm and it was still WARM!! I was getting odd looks from everyone else takign shelter in the building lobby. A stack of delivery bicycles and motorbikes was slowly growing in our driveway as the poor food delivery guys ran to the lobby to get out of the rain.

It was awesome, and the rain probably happened again about three or four times that night, and again the next day. The storm seemed really close from 20+ floors up! My friends down the road are more than 40 floors up & said that it felt like the lightning was going to come inside the apartment! I woke up at about 4am with rain pelting my windows. I recalled seeing the window cleaners out all that day prior to the storm and felt sorry for them, all that work wasted and probably lots of gunk washed down from the top of the building to keep them occupied for another month!

So weird that I had just been saying I missed the rain, and not an hour later here was a storm! Now, about that million dollars I've been wanting...