Near-death experience

I learned first-hand tonight that lightning storms are MUCH cooler to watch from the safety of one's own home than to drive through ... for an hour and a half! Funny how vulnerable you can feel when all that is between you and a gazillion volts of electricity is a small metal vehicle doused in unceasing torrents of water.

I drove through an epic storm tonight, seriously, the kind ballads are sung about! The ironic part is that as I walked  to my car after class tonight, I was enjoying the feel of the sprinkles of rain on my face. I was thinking of how much I had missed the rain and how cool it was to see the lightning in the distance behind the buildings of the city.



Unfortunately, the lightning did not stay distant for very long as I drove toward home. Rather quickly, the coolness effect wore off and lightning seemed to be striking all around me. I kept thinking that I'd drive beyond it sooner or later, but it just kept getting worse. Luckily, the rain remained at a minimum most of the way, but the lightning was just crazy! It quite literally shredded the sky every few seconds.

I drove an average of 55 mph the whole way turning an hour's drive into at least an hour and a half of sheer barely-contained panic and terror. I just knew at any second that I was either going to be hit by lightning, or watch something explode in front of me, or get hit by a car blinded by one of the lightning strikes just ahead of us.

In spite of this, I did manage to pull out my camera phone and get a couple pictures and some video. You REALLY can't tell how crazy it is from the pics or vid, but here they are regardless... and I don't think I have any audio of me cussing... but I was rather tense, you must understand ... leeway must be granted under life and death circumstances.

And, I didn't capture any of the worst of it, which hit full force about 20 miles from home and lasted the rest of the way. I swear, as I exited the interstate and turned into town a bolt of lightning hit the ground not a dozen yards from my vehicle. And it is not impossible that I let out a ridiculously girlish scream and ducked. Most of my prayer went up in the last few blocks through town as it poured down rain around me and lightning still lit the entire night sky like a gigantic strobe light.

You will be glad to know, however that I did survive, and it only took me about an hour to stop shaking uncontrollably after I had made it to safety.

Lightning vid

Here's a link for the vid, I couldn't figure out how to embed it and I'm too tired to research it right now. You may also notice that Metallica is playing in the background. I thought it very apropos