Was not in the forecast nor remotely expected. Late last night while I was playing cards, out of no where, a massive thunder cell popped up right on top of me. At least that is what the gps and weather radar said. The current weather said hazy or overcast.
You know how you count from the lightning to the thunder to see how far away the storm is? The first strike was north a little bit, five seconds away. I thought to myself, “that’s cool, I haven’t seen a good show in a while.”. I grabbed my phone to pull up my weather app to see what was going on. I check the radar and camp was right on the border between a dark green(heavy rain) to a red(severe cell). It totally skipped the yellow and orange.
Now that I had my bearings, everything around me exploded in a bright white light. When I say bright, I mean I could only see white. Not myself, camp or even the trees. I was quite literally light blind for a fraction of a second. That is because almost instantly I shut my eyes as the sonic boom sent me to my knees. I didnt know if lightning blew up the BPA substation or a nuclear missile hit Seattle. I was out of breath and my chest hurt like someone punched me in the sternum.
I began to fiddle around for my phone while my eyesight slowly came back. I hit refresh on the radar and the center of the red blob was right overhead. As far as the sonic boom goes. I’ve seen an F14 break the sound barrier over the deck of the USS Nimitz and been super close to explosions going off. The noise I heard made the others look like a whisper. Give the boom a little dash of hyperacusis and tinnitus for a perfect deafening storm.
My ears are still ringing, my headache is pounding and there wasn’t much sleeping with my tremors. Get exicited!
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