All day rain has hinted that it might arrive. The sun shone early but even then clouds loomed in the west. I dried a load of clothes on the line and hung a second later in the day than I wanted. Nonetheless, the second batch got mostly dry before I gave up watching the sky and took it down. I needn’t have bothered, as the rain held off and the clothes on the line would have dried just fine before the rain started. Even now, hours later, the rain falls sporadically.
Thunder rumbles to the west and north. It, too, has been threatening arrival. Our house is nestled up to a knoll just to our west so we don’t always see weather arriving until it is close. This storm is a slow mover so we have known of its approach for hours. So far it’s all talk. The radar map shows some heavy rain over the hill, but it seems to be managing to avoid us. Was it something I said?
The children, of course, have some trepidation about a storm arriving when they are in bed. They find it hard to fall asleep, even though no storm is here and it may not arrive at all. They lie awake, wondering how hard it will hit, wondering what we will all do if the power fails, wondering what damage will result if the wind howls. Their imaginations exaggerate.
Rain would be good. I did not water the garden today, thinking rain would fall at some point. It seems to be taking a while to get around to it. Next Tuesday I plan to scout out a second Mountain Birdwatch route on Burnt Rock Mountain. I saw that the route was open and I enjoy my route on Ricker Peak so much that I figured I would try to fit in a second one. Problem is I need to find the points in the light so that when I hike up in the dark I will be able to find them when I survey the route for real. Rain tonight would be great, but on Tuesday it would be a bummer.
The light fades and rain trickles down. The clothes are in. The children will drift off soon enough. The day quiets. And the storm sidles its way across the Champlain Valley. Sooner or later it will settle in right here.
I had to pull down some of the lightweight items that were dry from the first load both to create enough space and to provide the clothespins to hang everything. We had waited all week–longer actually–to do laundry and we lucked out with the weather. I just needed to puzzle out how to make room for everything for our family of four, including children who love mud.
Mercury on the Move 