Rain Here, Rain There

People here in Southern California really don't know what a rainstorm is. Today, I heard a girl complaining about having to practice in the barely visible specks of water falling from the sky that she called "rain." If I heard this years ago, I would have agreed with the her.  I thought I knew what rain was when I was younger. Rain meant putting on my raincoat and getting my boots wet in the "big" puddles out in my front yard. Occasionally during the night, flashes of lightening would penetrate my bedroom shutters right before the thunder would rattle the windows. This was the extent of my knowledge of a rain storm, until I experienced a one in the Grand Canyon.

As the sun set, the clouds began to accumulate. I knew a storm was coming, but I had no idea what was about to happen. At first, the drops of water that I knew to be rain began to fall from the sky. Suddenly, the droplets got bigger and bigger, becoming what seemed like five times larger than the rain I knew back home. I became drenched within seconds from standing outside while the abnormally giant sized raindrops continued to pour down.

Soon the lightening arrived. It lit up the sky just as it lit my room through my window shudders, except the bolt made it almost daytime for a split second, then complete darkness would return until the next bolt struck. The thunder that rattled my bedroom window was magnified as it rolled through the canyon. As I stood soaking listening to the thunder and watching the sky turn from white to black, I realized what I thought to have been rain was only a small fraction of it's true power.