By about the middle of the spring, I start to take the nightly lightning shows for granted. I’d like to say I retain my awe of these amazing natural spectacles, but I have to admit that after 20 or 30 straight nights of lightning dancing through the clouds, I begin to lose my amazement.
Every once in a while, a bolt of lightning will streak out of the clouds and connect with the ground below, lighting up the whole prairie. And on occasion, those bolts will come one after another – and sometimes three, four or more at a time. Maybe it’s the rarity of those bolt lightning displays, or possibly it’s the sheer power and beauty of them, but those light shows never get old.
This time of year, when the cloud lightning is just getting started, I find myself out on the back porch nearly every night, just watching the clouds light up. There are blues, purples, and even greens and yellows that show through the clouds. Sometimes the light shows are intensely active, keeping the sky lit up in thousands of hues for hours; other nights, the electric display is more sedate, and the colors are less vibrant and fewer and farther between.
I hope I don’t get immune to these wonders of nature this year. The fact that it feels like they’ve started earlier this year make me worry that I’ll grow bored with them sooner. I hope that’s not the case. Because last year, I missed the first couple of months of these light shows when I was up in Bismarck. I don’t know if they didn’t get lightning like this up there, or if the city was just too bright to let me see them. Either way, I’ve got some catching up to do on my lightning watching.
So if you’re looking for me in the evenings the next few months, I’ll be on my back porch, watching the clouds light up again and again.
