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September 16, 2002

Thunder And Lightning

Ever since I got back from Redmond, Southern Ontario has been smothered with heat and humidity, the likes of which I haven't seen since being in Tokyo. Then, Saturday night the skies opened up and boy did it rain. It rained all evening, took a short break until midnight, then rained all night. Then it rained Sunday. Thunder crashing and lightning flashing. It was then I realized that I haven't seen a storm like that in a long time. Living in the American North-West you see rain (do you ever!), but rarely do you have thunderstorms. Ditto for the interior of Japan (Nagano-ken). And I lived there during the rainy season, when ponds swelled to lakes, and department store umbrella sheathes were plentiful.

Now I'm no meteorologist, but my guess is that the lack of thunderstorms has something to do with the mountains. Storm clouds sit lower in the sky than the tops of the mountains, thus they discharge their stormy contents before reaching the other side. Now here in Waterloo, the closest thing to a mountain is the Math and Computers building (more like a fortified prison, actually), so there's nothing to stop the storms. I guess that's why they call it Waterloo.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

00:00 | Stuff

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