The Doughnut Hole Closes: Big Rain

As I was closing last night's late blog a few drops spritzed down outside and radar showed that we might get a little light rain. Somewhere between the late weather radar and about 12:30 something exploded. The lightning and very loud, very close thunder and then the torrential rain on the roof made it a little tricky to get to sleep. A nearby lightning strike tripped the breaker on the west end of the house... But, I did get to sleep and a seemingly very tired dog showed no sign of getting up even into mid-morning. When I did finally check the rain gauge: 2.8"; whoa!! It had really poured.
After a walk through the coolish but very muggy air late morning, I was a little amazed there was not more water in the creek and that that much rain had mostly seemed to infiltrate and not runoff. I haven't checked yet but either the pond hadn't filled or the spillway had managed to work even with all the debris still in it. Pond was still a pond and not a drained mud pit. Whew!!
There are still lots of aftershocks in and around the big quakes that have shaken up the Pacific rim lately but nothing above magnitude 5.5, so far today. Hawaii is still resting after several very fired up months of activity and there are no big volcano related quakes today. That will, of course, change but things are fairly quiet today.
The clouds around today are likely to limit any sky viewing I do this evening. A shame, as the now gibbous, waxing moon will be hanging with golden Saturn, high up in the south tonight. Over the next couple of days it will move on to its now monthly visit with Mars. That may be the next time I get to see the cloud free, evening sky.  The first big blast of Canadian air will arrive late Wednesday clearing the air of the swamp-load of moisture it now possesses and dropping temps into the very pleasant zone.  But, don't wait to get out till then, it's still pretty pleasant out there on the big planet. I'm going to do some more reading (2 books: David Quammen's latest, The Tangled Tree about the discoveries that have lead to the current ideas in evolution and Edward Tenner's look at the problems with efficiency and why many of the best ideas come from taking more, not less time; inefficiency being better in many respects - interesting how often the two books converge...) go for another walk and maybe throw in a nap. We'll see if I get out a chain saw and make sure I have enough wood for the coming cold season, Today on Earth.