Thunderstorm season

Sandy and Chris had driven all the way from El Paso last night, so when they got home, we fired up the hot tub in our back yard. I had been a bit worried about them, because we were due to get a big thunderstorm.

It arrived just as the tub had heated up. Sandy sensibly desisted from hanging out in a hot tub in driving rain. Chris thought it was rather cool to get rained on, although the odd bit of hail bothered him somewhat. I decided that the hot tub part sounded good, but not the driving rain part, so I got a big umbrella and sat in the tub under it, as you can see in the photo.

Sandy got increasingly worried about our sanity and our safety when the lighting started to hit nearby, so we got out. About ten minutes later, there was an enormously loud crack of lightning very nearby. It turns out it had hit an oak tree in the front yard of our next door neighbor. It split the tree in several large pieces, which fell on his lawn as you can see in this next photo, taken from our front lawn.

Remind me to listen earlier to Sandy next time.