Stormy Weather

It is definitely summer time in the South. For the past few days, ever late afternoon, ominous dark clouds roll in. Some times it lets a little rain fall for an hour, then vanishes... other times huge torrential storms take over the area and hit you upside the head with their force. The photo above is from my neighborhood last week. I love panorama sky shots, they look so awesome! Those clouds barely gave us any rain until way later that evening even though they looked threatening.

Saturday was my first day back at work after being sick and it was a long day. I grew tired pretty easily and even though we were steady we luckily we weren't swamped. It was a hot, humid and sunny day until late afternoon some grey clouds began to move in. I told my coworker to check the view outside (since the circulation desk doesn't have windows close by like reference does) once they started to get dark. We knew a storm was coming for sure. Fifteen minutes later she came and got me, telling me to go look out the front door. If we thought the sky was dark before, it was BLACK now....

With the sun shining still over us it was a very haunting view to see straight black clouds in the sky barreling straight towards you! At around 5:30 the thunder started ripping through the sky, lightening began making our power flicker, and rain started pounding down so hard we could barely see outside. Pine tree branches were falling all around the pavilion and the grass around the side of the building disappeared under water. It barely let up around closing and we felt terrible having to have people leave to go out in it, but our managers said we essentially didn't have a choice.

We were a bit behind in closing with all that chaos but as we hurried to lock up I almost fell over as soon as I entered our program's office. It was literally raining in the office. I could hear it and as I glanced up I saw a ceiling tile fall to the floor, which had a huge puddle blooming across it, with a SPLAT.

Oh. Crap.

My coworker and I ran to get plastic to try and protect the books (mostly children's books for story times and summer reading) and move things out of the way as quickly as we could. At one point the plastic gathered a bunch of water and poured on to my head soaking me completely! Yea, we laughed about it. I am a decent height, about 5'7'', but my coworker is all of maybe 5'3'' and the two of us trying to drape plastic over eight feet of shelving was pretty comical in itself.

We used soda cans to try and support the plastic and did our best to clean up, staying nearly an hour after we closed.

Needless to say it was a mess! Naturally as soon as we stepped outside to go to our cars it had stopped raining completely. There was even some blue sky off in the distance. You can't even make this stuff up! UGH. It drizzled a little on my way home but at my house it was bone dry. It hadn't even rained there yet! We had a huge storm about ten miles from my house with all this damage and nothing at home. Sigh. I could hear thunder and see lightening as we got dinner ready, but when it did rain (hours later) it was nothing like on base.

Southern Summer Weather has officially begun!