Greenstorm's Journal

Tonight's Escapade panel suggestion hangout had me making people laugh, so it was the high point of the day, easily. Moreso even than my brother J., his daughter A., and his wife E. coming over for lunch - a rare Manhattan visit on E.'s part, but my parents thought more of it than I did, so not my day's high point.

Also not a high point but a good one was taking the night to write for a challenge, and letting myself be surprised by the story. I took a prompt without knowing what I'd do with it, then let the story tell me how to take me where I wanted to go. I always enjoy it when that happens.

I don't know how far I can see from my parents' rooftop. I know it's across the Hudson and into New Jersey, but I don't know how many miles it is past the Palisades and beyond. On days like today, it's even farther, because I watched a thunderstorm roll in. It wasn't quite over the horizon because there's no real horizon up there, and it was still a good long ways away, enough of a distance that when I got up there, it was sunny enough I put on sunscreen. It took a while to notice the cloud covering up the sky, a flat, hard gray all the way from here to far out there, because it wasn't doing anything but slowly moving in. There wasn't even any noise. There was a gorgeous set of edges to the clouds closer to us, the kind you get where it's a stark boundary between the clouds and the sky beyond, punched together and folded into itself and never going past that boundary.

It didn't have a smell and it didn't have a sound. It had a feeling from the sight of it, and it had an aura in the air you could feel, if you knew what to feel for. If you'd felt it before. I've seen thunderstorms come in from New Jersey before and it's always a thrilling treat. The anticipation makes you want to sing. I could see how, for all it was covering the sky north to south, there was still a bit of clear sky left far out west. Until there wasn't, and it was something hazy. Until it was gone too, and it was coming in.

My dad and I stood and watched, and took some pictures. We talked about the lightning and the thunder, and of watching the rain start to take over.

Far out west, we could see where rain was from how the clouds were coming down to the horizon line. Nearby west, we could see where the rain was from how the clouds had come down to the ground. It was almost like seeing fog roll into San Francisco, clouds come down to greet the dirt. We could still see the Palisades, the Hudson, and we could feel the rain roll in and fall down onto us. We felt it keep on coming, harder, and we started to hear the rain and not just the thunder. Then it hit. It wasn't a gullywasher as I'd call one because I saw it come in, so it wasn't as sudden as all that. But it was definitely a downpour.

It was something of a disappointment to look up and see it'd cleared up and the sun was shining. I'd been enjoying all the sounds. It was close to an inch of rain in under an hour, so it'd be a gullywasher as others would call such a storm. But I can't, since I saw it come in and touch down.