Rain Plops

The weather forecast for the past several days (and the next couple) says something about scattered 'late afternoon thunder showers.' In my little neighborhood that usually means the pool closes about 4pm because the lifeguard hears the distant rumble of thunder and there are the fringes of dark clouds to the north of us. No rain. No storm. No afternoon swim!

Well, last evening about 4:30 the horses made a beeline for their shed. The birds and insects vanished and I looked out the window. To the north coming at us at 35mph (that's what The Weather Channel said) was a scattered thunder shower. These things do not come from the north! They come from Annapolis and skirt the edges of northern Talbot County. This little monster does not just ease us into a thunder storm with the distant rumbles of thunder progressively getting louder. No, this little guy rips up to us, no wind, no pre-rain drops, nothing civilized. This guy suddenly lands overhead and drops "plops" of rain. I thought at first it was hail-marble size maybe. Then I looked at the plop stain on the patio and it was about 3 inches in diameter. The plops looked like a hundred thousand angels had a tablespoon of water and just let them loose all at once. The plops fell for about 15 minutes. In the middle of all this The Weather Alert beeps on TV telling us to be aware of flash floods. About two inches of plops containing water fell (according to the Weather Service). Weird.

Then, we get thunder and lightening, a bit of a brisk wind and a real thunder storm dumps another half inch.

My home engineered drainage project was overwhelmed. Water an inch or more deep stood in the swampy areas of my yard all night. This morning things are back to normal and everything on my patch of earth did well. The drainage works.

The horses were just too funny after the storm. They sauntered out to the pasture and looked around at all the wet grass. I guess wet grass is not very appetizing. Thunder, the new horse, was off by himself in the part of the pasture that gets standing water when it rains. He was in there stomping in puddles of water. He would take one foreleg and then the other and splash, splash, splash. He saw me walking around and came to the fence. I swear the boy had a horse smile on his face. He gave me some horse kisses and I cooed that I was glad he like to stomp in the rain puddles as much as I do. I swear his grin got bigger.