The previous day was horriffic! Our 6th day to reach 30 for the new “hot” season.

Gawd I hate summer.

But late afternoon bought our regular lifesaver, the coorong seabreeze, to cool the southern ranges back to a more respectable temp below 20 degrees. So we left the bedroom door open so the cool would make sleep easy. The sound of the frogs in the pond accompanied us to the land of dreams. But early in the AM this open door amplified the sound of rain! Big drops falling hard on the tin roof, a magical sound made louder with no barriers to stop the sound coming inside. And, er, hello, is that thunder? Certainly was but a long way distant so I just lay there soaking up the sound of the thunder while the parched ground soaked up the sporadic showers of huge dropped rain. The years have taught me that thunder this distant is not worth getting up for, the bolts are just too far away to be photogenic in any real way, but when the windows rattle, then you need to get going.

So the windows rattled!

Up and out in time to see a nice close cloud strike. But the camera is still coming out of its bag dammit. Hop into the ute and to my “lakeview” for the storms are, as they usually are, south of me. (or north, rarely overhead)

The lightning stopped as I finally was set up.

But the sun was rising and the view that unfolded was beautiful. There may have been no bolts this time, the scene, landscape and cloudscape down the valley and out east over the lakes from my “highpoint” made up for it. Its not always about lightning. Far from it.