Thoughts have been running through my head non-stop since last night's crazy storm. I wish I could be a great writer and describe the scene to you so that you felt like you were there, but it's not quite going to happen that way. My humble apologies.
Marc came over last night to give me another key for the bike lock he gave me (as it seems I have lost/misplaced the other one). In return for his favour, I made him dinner - Shroom With Ado. Portobello mushrooms, green and red peppers, red onions all wrapped up in warmed whole wheat tortillas. It was pretty tasty!
Anyway, we chatted after dinner and just as he left I went to open my windows again and discovered that the wind had really picked up. About a second after that Marc called me to tell me that he was in front of my building and he was watching a lightning storm. I ran outside, saw the lightning with him and decided we'd get a better view from the roof of my building. Up the stairs, onto the terrasse and there we had it. A clear view of downtown, the mountain and to the west (east view is blocked by a big old tree). So we watched the lightning for a while. But it wasn't just watching and waiting for the lightning to hit somewhere. The sky would just light up, every 2-4 seconds! On and on and on! It kept coming and coming! The sky would turn a white/grey kind of colour, then blue, purple, green ... the clouds were moving in fast and we were getting a sprinkling of rain. After a good 10-15 minutes of that we noticed that the mountain had disappeared behind the clouds. Rain was a comin' - fast and furious. Within a minute downtown had disappeared almost completely. I have quite a good view of the skycrapers downtown and all we could see in the end was the top of the IBM building. No more PVM, no more Chateau Champlain, no more 1000 de la Gauchetiere. And that's about when the rain started to pour down on us. We stayed for another 5 minutes or so but then decided to go in.
Marc dried off a little and then left to drive home. I dried off, changed clothes and sat in my window for another 30 minutes. I watched the lightning, the wind whip the trees, the rain come down sideways at times and listened to the thunder rumble continuously. It was awesome.
Lucky for me I didn't lose power at any point. I heard on the radio this morning that quite a lot of people in Montreal did (78,000 according to The Gazette).
5 comments:
If you'd been prepared, could you have taken photos?
Before the rain yes.
It took me 30 minutes to get home. At some points I was driving 15 Km/h on the highway with my hazards on and couldn't see anything through the wall of rain coming down. I got home to find out I had lost power. So I decided to go down to the lakeshore and watch the light show. One bolt hit about 500m away from me. I don't ever remember a storm like this one.
Marc, I would have crapped my pants having lightning hit so near! Was the bang deafening?
Why, the thunder was very loud but I didn't crap my pants. I must have left my car window open though. My pants seemed to have gotten wet...
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