Storm's a Comin'

Well...yesterday it seemed to be turbulently windy all day, with a clear sky. Tree tops were being thrown around like some some giant was running his fingers over them. I was trying to get some fence posts put in the back yard, and by 5 pm I was finished. The sky was still mostly clear, but clouds with dark bottoms were starting to appear and race toward the northwest. Then the sky got a lot darker, and the mother of all storm clouds settled over our land. It was like one of those scenes out of the film "Independence Day", when the alien ships move in. Then the rain started and was at full intensity in a what seemed like a few seconds. Then the thunder and lightning started, and rolled on through the night, with more intense rain squalls. In the morning, as the cold front passed, the temperature dropped, and it stayed cold and windy throught the day. These rain splats seem to happen here in Tampa in the spring and summer, and are usually surprises when they appear. Other than Cape Canaveral, Tampa seems to have the most intense lightning storms. The name "Tampa" is supposed to mean "big sky lighting" in Seminole. We don't get a lot of violent cold front storms like this one. The storms we do get are mostly the type that build slowly with dark skies, sometimes for days before starting to rain. Sometimes the rain never starts. We call those fooley-bear storms.