My apologies for having left last night's party early, I had no choice. Shortly before 9:30 we got hit with a lot of lightening and thunder. Oddly, it didn't rain. The first flash of lightening caused a dimming of my lights so I found it necessary to shut down and wait it out.

The power stayed on but there were many many strikes of lightening. Mother Nature's fireworks were pretty awesome and lasted well over an hour. They also did some visible damage.

I had to go into the city this morning for milk. As I enter the city I drive by a bowling alley. A power line to a tranformer was knocked down and it left a 3 foot wide swath of totally burned out vegetation from the curb to the building itself. The powerline landed on an attached storage shed. There didn't seem to have been a fire, it just looks as if a tree limb hit it but no tree limb could have. I didn't notice any burned edges, which surprises me, just a crease which cleaves the upper third of the building in two.

The vegetation in the area between the curb and building was quite high and on one side you can see the singeing of the upper leaves. The area isn't black exactly, it looks as if someone cut into it and then removed the vegetation exposing the underlying soil. I imagine the power company cleaned it out in order to work in that area as the power line has been lifted but it isn't up as high as it was.

I don't believe this had anything to do with the dimming of my lights as this occured just over 4 miles away from me and the transformer involved isn't on the trunk line that heads in my direction. The dimming of my lights more than likely occured when a tree limb fell onto the wires along the road to my house. Odd that I didn't hear the fire siren. If my windows are open I can hear it every day at noon, but not when there was an obvious emergency. It would be very unlikely that the fire department didn't respond as this particular tree limb caught fire.

According to our local weather report we will be treated to more thunder and lightening throughout the next three days. It will be sometime on Tuesday before this system leaves the area. Which means that it will be sometime on Tuesday before I get a reliable internet connection again. In the meantime my visits will be hit and miss which is fine as I have much to occupy me while I'm waiting. It might just take me that long to dry out the drivers seat of my car.

I'm not a big fan of blue grass music but when John the Squabbler told me HE left his car window open and now has a Soggy Bottom I just couldn't resist it.



The car seat is resisting the drying out process because I can't leave the window open long enough. I don't have a soggy bottom because I used a sheet of plastic on the car seat.

The updated weather report calls for rain through Thursday so I guess the three of us will have Soggy Bottoms until then.