The usual practice is to look out the kitchen window to the SE and you can see what the weather’s going to be this afternoon. A wet monsoon removes that bit of predictability; you never know what direction a storm cell will come from, and you never know where it will go.
So yesterday around four I’m starting to think I should head over to Ian’s to take a shower, right? And with Tobie needing his supper and walkie in about an hour, this always gets complicated. Basically wait for dinnertime, then take him for his walkie on a route that ends up at Ian’s. Shower and head home. I looked out the kitchen window to the SE and this seemed like a workable plan. Shouldn’t have waited.
I went out on the porch with Tobie and there was a massive and angry stormfront barreling down from the north. I mean this was ‘wipe Joel and all his works off the face of the earth’ massive and angry. ‘Nice walk with Tobie and then take a shower’ became ‘get Tobie’s ass out here for the minimum essential walkie and then rush home to close all the windows and pray for mercy from the storm gods.’
He wondered what I was in such a hurry about until the wind gusts started and lightning flashed all along the northern horizon. Then he stopped playing grab-ass happy puppy games and got with the program of ‘let’s go home right f’ing now.’
Wind gusts became just lots and lots of wind. There was a veritable sandstorm over the wash, clifftop-high. Really destructive-looking lightning. I closed all the windows, turned on the fans, then started pacing between views to choose the form of our destructor: Would we be killed by wind, lightning or flood? For the record I do have a Plan B for apocalyptic storm, and I was seriously thinking maybe I should exercise it while there was still time.
Then the rain started … and then the rain stopped as the whole show passed to the east leaving us completely unscathed. Fakeout scare! Real funny.
And this morning there were hardly any tracks left in the (dry) sand of the wash – but not because of any flood. Windstorm, not rainstorm.
