Summer Storms

A violent storm knocked out a big tree limb in my backyard. I heard a loud crack and rushed to the window. This was around 9:30 or 10:00 so it was dark and rainy. I had to press my face to the glass and force my eyes to focus on the tree. I was both relieved and disappointed. My backyard tree lost a sizable limb from the unrelenting wind. I think it’s a pear tree, which is not the strongest wood.  The relief I felt is because it didn’t hit the garage, neither did anything fall off the front tree (maple) and ruin my SUV in the driveway. It lost a few more limbs, much smaller and manageable. It losses a few dangling limbs during nearly every storm anyway. I’ve just come to expect it. Last year I had someone climb up it and cut all the deadwood and barely-still-there type of branches. Since then I’ve noticed a lot less debris overall. It still likes to shed during the storms though.

I woke up this morning expecting to start cutting the fallen limb into bits and hauling it to the street. I noticed the whole area got trashed by that storm, it wasn’t just my yard. My neighbor in back had a large birch trunk split down the middle. Part of it crushed their new fence as well. The whole street took a beating from north to south. Street lights were out as well. My brother, a mile away, lost power. These storms usually pass through in the spring. Summer is normally light, warm rain and moist breezes that cool down the land after a 90 degree day. Oklahoma doesn’t see a lot of those. You either get extended droughts or what the guy at Lowes called a “gullywasher”. I was buying hostas at the time and preparing to line the fence with them. “Might want hold off on that” he said “Tonight’s supposed to be a gullywasher”. That’s the first time I heard that phrase but didn’t ask him what it meant. It’s a word that explains itself perfectly.

I didn’t grow up here as a kid but it seems like the rain and storms are more violent here. I don’t just mean from destruction. The weather events just feel more intense, hard driving rain, angry wind. I’m sure it’s my imagination but I didn’t think the storms were that much different than the upper Midwest. I know the tornados are worse, but summer storms too?

As a kid I loved a good summer storm. You could stand outside and not worry about getting sick from cold rain. Lightning is usually destructive, but sometimes it’s so far away it doesn’t feel like it. It just cracks across the sky and lights up the dark clouds for brief second; you don’t even hear the thunder. At one house we had a long picture window with a great view of the front yard. I’d sit on the couch against the window and watch the storm progress and the rain get faster as it moved across the yard.

 Storms were more fun as a kid, getting wet and splashing in puddles too. But then everything was more fun as a kid. Being an adult is the worst. “Adulting” it’s called, which is an appropriate name that makes it sound like a game kids would play, talk about named perfectly. Probably the biggest difference from childhood to adulthood is that fun becomes work awfully quick. Families don’t get together so the parents can ride bikes and play kick ball. Kids are all about fun and find it even in things adults hate to do. And one thing we really hate to do is clean up the yard after a gullywasher.