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I love the South Florida skies. With the ground as flat as the ocean, you have wide arcing sky vistas here, great domes of shifting colors and shades and shapes that encase you below. Look up sometime and just observe for a while. Especially this time of year, when our sunshine often is interrupted for an hour or two by thunderstorms. I’ve always felt that those brief summertime eruptions of light and fury are something to savor. They add drama and intensity to our tropical lifestyle. To me, they’re one of South Florida’s great natural spectacles.
Typically, the daytime sky begins with the faintest wisps of orange and yellow rising into a pale blue dawn. With the full sunrise, the paleness gives way to a deeper blue and a hot, insistent, hazy summer sun. Sometimes the skyview stays this way all day, untouched by clouds. But clouds come and go more frequently here during the warm weather and they may begin to gather along the horizon by late morning. This is the time to start watching, as tall towers of white and blue-gray sweep above the sea. Later, in the afternoon usually, the storms may come for a while. If you’re lucky.
Look along the horizon now. You’ll see a mass of layers in every tone of gray, light to dark, rising and building into imposing cloudbanks. Then you’ll hear it. The first low grumble of thunder. If you haven’t before, you’ll want to take shelter now. Go inside some well-protected place. Find a room with a broad window, sit back from the glass a safe distance and watch the show. Because a real South Florida thunderstorm is something to see. It may start with a fierce crack of sound, like the opening chord of some great symphony. And then relentless volleys of rain follow beneath a swirling, deepening gray sky shredded by lightning. Wide bolts rip through the clouds, grand wicked streaks cutting through the skyline, all chased by the bang and echo of thunder. It is spectacular. And it is beautiful. And it never lasts long. Normally, the storm ends as it began, suddenly, and the sky clears to blue again and later fades to pale once more as the sun settles into the horizon. It will be cooler now, after the sun and after the storm, and a sultry South Florida evening is waiting for you.
Typically, the daytime sky begins with the faintest wisps of orange and yellow rising into a pale blue dawn. With the full sunrise, the paleness gives way to a deeper blue and a hot, insistent, hazy summer sun. Sometimes the skyview stays this way all day, untouched by clouds. But clouds come and go more frequently here during the warm weather and they may begin to gather along the horizon by late morning. This is the time to start watching, as tall towers of white and blue-gray sweep above the sea. Later, in the afternoon usually, the storms may come for a while. If you’re lucky.
Look along the horizon now. You’ll see a mass of layers in every tone of gray, light to dark, rising and building into imposing cloudbanks. Then you’ll hear it. The first low grumble of thunder. If you haven’t before, you’ll want to take shelter now. Go inside some well-protected place. Find a room with a broad window, sit back from the glass a safe distance and watch the show. Because a real South Florida thunderstorm is something to see. It may start with a fierce crack of sound, like the opening chord of some great symphony. And then relentless volleys of rain follow beneath a swirling, deepening gray sky shredded by lightning. Wide bolts rip through the clouds, grand wicked streaks cutting through the skyline, all chased by the bang and echo of thunder. It is spectacular. And it is beautiful. And it never lasts long. Normally, the storm ends as it began, suddenly, and the sky clears to blue again and later fades to pale once more as the sun settles into the horizon. It will be cooler now, after the sun and after the storm, and a sultry South Florida evening is waiting for you.
posted by LauderBLOGGER at 11:10 AM
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