Dry Thunderstorm

I've seen them before, when I lived in the desert. Amazing lightning displays, thunder rolling like a bumping steamroller over the hills. But - no rain. Heavy clouds, lots of wind gusts, spectacular light displays, sizzling sounds of lightning slashing the air and sparking the sand - no rain. Awesome but harmless - as long as you are in shelter and are not taller than the nearest mesquite. Unlike the thunderstorms that pour down rain, there is no cooling down of the temperatures. The cold breezes that accompany these storms are quickly reheated by the still-warm soil, and dissipate into the night when their driving force, the storm, is past.

Here in the grasslands it's different. A dry thunderstorm rolled thru last night. It was ominous and oppressive; the humidity went from 16% to 56% - but, no rain. The lightning slashing from sky to hill to hill, and thunder booming. Then the loud CRACK! of a nearby strike... and within 10 minutes the town's siren gave off one long piercing blast. FIRE! A fire, the east side of the Henderson's trailer washout.

The ranchhands bolted for their trucks - utility pickup trucks, parked at each ranch, with large neoprene tanks strapped in the beds - and went racing to the scene. A couple more fellows stopped by the station to pick up the two similar trucks parked at the fire station. They went over the hill past my house, and turned right down a cowpath, then over and around the next hill, throwing dust. Yes, dust - still no rain. No one brought the big diesel fire truck - it isn't built for these cowpaths, these summer brush fires down tiny lanes where a heavy unwieldy truck will wallow in the sand, helpless and directionless as a newborn calf. It's for more of an in-town, highway-dependent rescue operation. It does ok in snow, but is a helpless beast in sand.

They put it out, thank goodness, and only an acre of grassland was burned.

That's why all of our local houses have the sprinklers running, why our farmhouses are surrounded by lush green patches of damp growth. For one thing, water is cheap - it is pumped straight from the aquifer, no additives. When I open one of my field pumps, icy-cold, clear water comes bursting out, powerful enough to direct a sprinkler head fifty feet. For another, we are surrounded on all sides by the rolling hills of grasslands that feed the Angus beef - and in this hot and dry, no-humidity, sand-based environment, fire runs thru here like - well, wildfire. It runs thru the brush as if it were sniffing out a trail of kerosene. When it meets a patch of heavily-soaked, carefully-trimmed green growth, it is slowed. One hopes, slowed enough. And all it takes is for one errant lightning strike to set off a holocaust of blazing destruction, one high-rolling thunderous storm to deposit nary a drop of moisture, to sling a single bolt down to rape the grassland. Amazing, terrible, and full of portent; we watch those storms as if our lives depended on them. For, in fact, they may.