aka R’acquel

My father’s a volcano chaser. For me, it’s the weather. The geography bone definitely comes from my Dad. It was passed onto him from his own dad, so it’s definitely in the blood!

A very cranky electrically charged storm hit Leura early evening about 3 days ago on 7th February 2007. It struck somewhere between 4-6pm-ish? D’oh-ing myself for not taking more thourough notes!

It was a foggy & wet damp style of morning, followed by a very dry & hot day - which then made a sudden turn for the evening into a strong electrically charged storm. We experienced a similar pattern of weather the day before but not as intense.

I know this style of weather during summer is normal, especially with “hail” but i haven’t experienced it for quite a few years.

Could feel the electricity in the air - it was really thick and the sound of thunder had a very low, voluminous kind of a boom to it. At one stage, i thought I was hearing the sound of a rescue hellicopter but it was merely thunder. Very stange sounds of thunder indeed.

Had a friend in Hartley who let us know how bad things were, so we had a bit of advanced warning to unplug our electrical appliances. I’ve noticed recently that weather like this seems to be more intense in the Lithgow region, but it’s just a hunch based on storms occuring the last 2 months atm. Hail larger than golf balls was reported in the Lithgow area during this storm. It’s made me really curious about how the terrain in that area might be a possible cause if it is the case.

The thunder wasn’t a cranking bang like crackling chewing gum that pops in your mouth with a lot of trebble. Very low-bass kind of crumple about it - very much like listening to Rob Zombie in our car with the bass cranked up and there’s no woofer in the vehicle. It had the same kind of angry doofing techno power about it

The town experienced a blackout, perhaps about 2 hours long? We had to go shopping too, so it was really eerie to see the neighbouring suburb of Katoomba without electricity too. The shopping experience was really strange without as much lighting. The supermarket was lucky to have an emergency supply to allow continued trade. People were jumpy & on edge in the supermarket. Not too far off from the crazy flight paths of flies you can sometimes get just before it rains.

Young men were getting heated. We walked past one violent brawl about to emerge, I also faced two men making risky manouvres on the road with their cars during my drive back home too. You could almost smell the testosterone in the air.

I think the storm & blackout shook up many people. Perhaps this was amplified because we were heading towards a supermarket. No power - how to cook dinner? What if the blackout lasted much longer? What if it didn’t get back on within 24 hours… or a week?! It did put me into a bit of a panic mode, noted “alert” or adrenaline whilst walking down the ailses perusing the non-perishable items alright. The electricity kicked back in while we were checking-out.

The quality of light after the storm was really weird - like wearing my sunglasses with a very subtle orange tint about it. The atmosphere had a very unusual vibe about it due to the foggy mist surrounding my house suddenly making a very abrupt departure - as though it had not rained at this place at all.

The colour of the light made the place feel very strange, almost alien. I’ve always enjoyed the luminence after storms, it’s always a good time to take photos. I have experienced the orange tinge before, though it’s been very rare.

Some parting photos of the post-storm period here that i captured. It was really difficult to get the real ambience/luminence of the light. I caught intriguing shots of just how much “orange” colour there was living in the sky, however the flash on my camera amplified the colour HEAPS as it certainly wasn’t that orange here!

Another picture displaying very unusual behaviour in my family before the storm! I rarely use the dishwasher these days. We ended up using nearly all the cups in our house so we were unusually more thirsty than usual? I wonder if this could this be a potential sign to look out for in the event of strange weather on the verge? lol

Might be worth seeing if there’s a storm chasing meme in the world of blog to join! If anyone knows of any then please let me know!

Like, i’m so sick of spam blog sites ripping off content from my site…
www.akaracquel.com