A Wetter Brand of Rain

We are not jumpy people.

Okay. D. might twitch, but that’s just Fight or Flight impulses getting sorted — and he defaults to ‘Fight.’

T. does not flinch or scream often, even when people jump out at her. Of course, you have to watch out for her backhand if you do jump out at her, but other than a strained facial expression, she’s fairly steady when scared. Which is why her reflexive shriek and leaping back from the window last night surprised even her. In her defense she kept muttering, “You shouldn’t hear lightning. You shouldn’t hear lightning!”

Oh, my, my, didn’t it rain.

N&K brought the sunshine with them and took it right back when they left. It has rained steadily since they’ve been here, except for a brief respite on the weekend. It’s a different kind of rain, however, than the previous eight months of precipitation we’ve encountered. For one thing, Spring rains are… softer. They seem to come with rising mists in silvery gray, a breath of floral scent, and lots of other cinematic atmospheric effects, including brightly colored umbrellas that are actually somewhat functional (in Glasgow, in the Winter, if one likes one’s umbrella, one saves it to admire indoors. The wind will turn it inside out, smash it into itty bitty pieces, and sneer, otherwise). One imagines people swinging ’round poles, singing and tap dancing in this type of rain — but people don’t, not if they have half the sense God gave them. This rain… it’s… wetter. No, really. It does not mess about.

Winter rains are accompanied by gusts of wind and freezing temperatures. Spring rains don’t bother with wind – they just dump water on you. The rain drops are large and warm and insistent. And yesterday afternoon, just about the time D. was to go to another lecture, the brooding heavens opened, the atmospheric mist lowered, and the buckets began their sluicing down. D. stood in the window and his shoulders sagged. He sighed. T. began to pry at the reluctance expressed and wheedled him into staying home. He went out briefly to a post box, and came back in soaking, hair plastered to his skull, his eyes bright. “Man, am I glad I’m staying in!” he said happily, and went to find dry clothes.

The post box is literally down to the corner and halfway to the main road — a less than five minute walk, and he was sopping wet, including his shoes.

The storm came on so quickly that it became quite dark. T. — a noted pyromaniac — decided that this was The Perfect Excuse to light candles. She was endeavoring to light her collection of tea lights on the windowsill when she heard what she later described as a sort of sibilant “Fssssssszzzzt” and was washed with a bright white light. She shrieked, and leapt back from the window as the building shuddered and the thunder boomed. It seems that lightning grounded out on the roof of the flat.

D. shouts, “You okay?”

T., now angry at the lightning for scaring her, tries to think of a suitable response, since she can’t give it a smack ’round the ears. “Maybe,” she mutters, but the sound is lost in the clatter of …hail. Not sleet, those sharp stinging shards of icy stuff, but hail, white, pea sized and rattling down like buckshot. Unbelievable.

We quickly discovered another difference between Winter and Spring rains: sound and fury. Winter simply howls with rain and sleet. Spring brings on the noise with some intense lightning strikes and thunder that sounds like a celestial bowling alley right above your head. The hail made a hissing noise as it came down, and drummed percussively against whatever it struck. It was a great show! Of course, we tried to photograph it — and for our first time, we feel pretty good that we got a tiny bit of lightning. The electricity crawled and spiked across the skies for well over an hour — but as lightning rarely strikes the same place twice, it was hard to know where to aim the camera. We will definitely try again!

When the storm passed, the sky lightened again to where we had to pull down the blinds to get to bed. Ah, Spring…

Flat hunting has gone into overdrive, but after today, D&T are both adamant that we *must* be up high, so we can watch storms come in. Once some of us got over being mildly startled (*cough*), it was fun.

– D & T

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.