OMG. It has been over 90 degrees for the last few days.

Because of the heat, I said ‘No’ to an opportunity to hear a wonderful soloist at Millennium Park Friday night. I try not to go anywhere without my water bottle, feeling the need to hydrate continually.  I have been feeling guilty when I take India for her afternoon walk.

She’ll jump up and down when I bring her leash out, but after she gets hooked up and we take a few steps outside, she’ll quickly look for a shady patch of grass to stretch out on.

Obviously, she doesn’t want to tread on the sidewalk after the cement has been baking in the sun for hours.

I found myself praying for a thunderstorm.  I know it was just a few days ago that we had a serious downpour — the stream of water gushed out of my building’s gutters like a Roman fountain – but the humidity already had built back up to an unbearable state, and I was ready for the heavens to crackle again.

A tag line for a popular over-the-counter antacid poses the question: How do you spell relief?

My summertime response would be T-H-U-N-D-E-R-S-T-O-R-M.

Although they happen everywhere, I guess thunderstorms are largely a Midwestern thing.  From a lifetime of summers spent in Illinois, I remember them as often happening as a late afternoon break, after which I might look to the sky for a rainbow.  And, of course, they often occur in the middle of night.

Like a disturbing dream, the flashing and rattle they cause might wake me, but some protective part of my unconscious will usually choose not to engage.   I’ll fluff up my pillow and fall back asleep.

My reaction the morning after a T-Storm is predictable.  When I walk the wet sidewalks of my neighborhood, I’ll see water pooled around leaf- clogged sewer covers.  I’ll notice tree branches, separated from the trunks they belonged to, blocking driveways. I might take note of how paper and empty plastic bottles that littered a nearby yard the previous day must have been lifted by a gust of wind and transported down the street.

I’ll ask myself, When did this happen? even though I understand that the destruction took place in the middle of the night when I didn’t want to look.

Still, it’s an incredible thought.  I would not normally think of violence as beautiful.  But thunderstorms represent a strange sort of beauty to me.

The unyielding meeting of different weather fronts, of opposites, of hot air and cool air, and the electricity caused by friction between water particles in expanding clouds…

T-storms are kind of sexy.

Not to pretend to be Mr. Science or a 7th grade teacher, but from what I understand there are three main stages to a thunderstorm.

They begin with the ballooning of cumulous clouds, which demonstrate the rise of moisture in the atmosphere.  The rain starts falling, maybe hail too, when the clouds are too full not to burst.  Then, the winds kick in as hot air (updraft) and cooler air (downdraft) engage in a muscular dance of dominance to change places.

Lightning and thunder come out of electrical charges from the interaction between water particles in the clouds.

Each stage of a thunderstorm is amazing to watch. It seems jarring, but there’s a sort of natural build-up.  Each stage has its own unfolding.

There’s the billowing then darkening of clouds, the changing direction of the wind, the long and narrow vertical strip of lightening in a dark sky, providing such a deep visual contrast but only for a very short time, by flashing and flickering.

It’s fun to see a bolt of lightning and try to guess when it will be followed by a thunderclap.  I know there’s a scientific reason for this, that sound travels much slower than light.  Still, it sort of feels like lovers who are not quite in sync.  They can’t be separated, but somehow, they can’t seem to be in their glory at the same time.

I don’t like to drive in a thunderstorm or to be caught in an open field during a cloudburst; to be at the mercy of wind gusts and blinding waves of pelting raindrops.

But I do love the unapologetic clash of air temperatures in the sky …

I love how the drama resolves itself as a RESET; how after a thunderstorm, it’s so much cooler and, often, especially still.

Surrendering to uncontrollable natural forces and being open to enjoy the show is no small thing.