4 posts tagged “nature”

After the trip to the Marine Lab, we took the long way home, passing across a new bridge in an isolated part of the city, up hilly terrain, where the road for most of the way was unpaved with exposed boulders and mudholes, and coming out through Pulangbato in Valencia.

The past years that I have lived in the mountains had me at the front row of several experiences involving forces of nature from earthquakes, thunderstorms, to the great migration of stingless bees.

The most memorable experiences have lightnings and thunderstorms taking center stage. Since my family's house sits on the shoulder of the highest peak in the province, which is about more than six thousand feet above sea level, we often get more amount of rainfall than the rest of the areas in the lowlands. And when a tropical cyclone does occur, the wind buffets the peaks at speeds that sometimes reach mach 3 levels, and we, with the thatched roofs and bamboo-slat walls, just close our eyes and pray really hard that no gust would carry off our huts.

If the weather had been warm or blazing right before the rains, we could expect that there would be a light show as thunder and lightning chase each other overhead. During times like this, it's really better to be indoors.


I now really believe that a very good way to know if a storm will break near where you are is to count the seconds that elapse between a lightning's flash and the boom of the following thunder. Divide this by five, and you get the idea how close (or how far), in miles, the storm is. In our mountains, if the count is down to 15 seconds, we just huddle inside the house and listen as the storm gets closer and closer.

Now, I do not believe that lightning would not hit the same place twice. My friend's house has almost always been hit each time there is a thunderstorm. One could see the trail that the lightning took from their front porch, on the side wall of their house, where it cracked some moulding, and on to their old chicken coop. There were singe marks --- testament to where the lightning hit each and every time.

According to wikipedia, lightning heats nearby air to about 10,000 degrees Celsius nearly instantly, which is almost twice the temperature on the sun's surface. No wonder trees in the vicinity die if a lightning struck too close. And the thunder heard when lightning strikes is actually a shockwave.

Lightning has already struck more or less 150 meters from our house --- three times in the past four years. The first year, the shockwave managed to dislodge chunks of the bathroom wall while I was in there taking a bath. In the second year, the lightning happily put the power out as it hit the power line servicing our residence. The latest bolt of Zeus had my partner and me shivering with fright as it struck too close for comfort while we were deep in slumber. It shook the house foundation and, with the usual aplomb, also put the power out.

What power this force of nature has! I could actually hear the billion bolts sizzle as a lightning bolt appears from the sky. No wonder the ancient people really thought that this was a tool that only someone Divine, someone so powerful, could wield.

It is presently the height of the summer season in my country. However, because of the intertropical convergence zone that falls where my country sits in this side of the globe, we suddenly had rains last night. And, as I've said earlier, this condition is perfect for thunderstorms.

Last night as Imalech, Sakura, and myself were already in bed, the storm built momentum; the light show was on, and, as I was happily dreaming, I became dimly aware of a flash, then the sizzling that sounded like bacon being fried for breakfast immediately followed. The house shook, the dogs whined, and Sakura cried in her sleep. The three of us buried our heads under the pillows and didn't really drift off again until the storm has subsided.

In the morning, the skies were still gray, but the weather has cooled enough. There will be no more light shows tonight (fingers crossed).