Haiku for you

It is still hot dudes
I am super cereal
One-hundred-plus temps

To help escape the heat we went to my parents’ and spent Saturday night there. That night we saw some strange-ass apocalypse-type weather. I’m not even joking man. It was fuh-reaky.

As the sun went down we started to see lightning off in the distance over the ocean. Maybe one bolt every five minutes or so. Distant thunder. As it got darker the wind started to really pick up and blow stuff all over the place. Temperature at 9pm was about 89 degrees.

All of a sudden the wind dies. Just completely disappears. It drops ten degrees in about five minutes.

Then we see the biggest lightning bolts ever. They shoot down and land into the ocean, vaporizing a column of water as they make contact. So much lightning! Maybe 20 strikes each minute. As each bolt hits we can see the surface of the water for miles in all directions for a half-second. Thunder claps are long and loud. Sirens in the distance.

We get sprinkled by passing clouds, but it hasn’t started raining. The wind comes back. Fog appears out of nowhere and blows to overtake us so quickly that it looks like smoke as it flows and wisps through the air. The moist heat returns.

Through the fog I see an orange glow in the distance. As the fog clears the glow sharpens and reveals itself to be a huge brushfire, started by lightning, over on Catalina. I’m relieved that an ocean of water separates us from the flames.

The storm comes closer to us and the sprinkles increase in number and size. The lightning comes closer too. We head back inside just in time to avoid a torrential downpour.

The rain came and went through the night and continued through the late morning Sunday.

This kind of weather isn’t uncommon for the rest of the country. But in Southern California it’s pretty rare – and exciting when it happens!