Storms

​I may not have been thought any earthquakes, but I have been through a few storms.  Not as many as people born in Brisbane but enough thank you.  It was in Townsville I first saw hail.  It was only little, but I came out of the squash complex to look at it.  We did not get a lot of them up there.  Cyclones were the go.
Down here is a different story though.  We have been fortunate really.  I look at the BOM and things look really threatening, and then mostly it divides, and some goes north and some south.  We get rain, and I can live with that.
In a previous place in Burpengary though I reckon we went through a tornado.  I knew something big was brewing and put on the third movement of Beethoven’s Fifth which is the storm scene.  The wind came from different directions during it.
It was at that place a storm was coming and someone decided to mow.  It seemed like a really bad idea.  They were determined.  So I joined them.  I thought “if they are going to go, I will go with them.”  But I am still here so we lived to tell the tale.
It is habitual.  I count after lightning to determine how far away the storm is.  Sometimes the storm is right over us and the time between the lightning and the thunder is almost nothing.
When I lived on the southside we had a shopping centre opposite the place we rented.  Lightning hit one of the transformers on the powerline.  It exploded.  One of the shop owners said it reminded him of Northern Island where he came from.  He owned a pharmacy.  I remember him asking how I was and when I told him I was very well thank you he said that is no good for him.  At that place a tree nearby was struck.  It was a silky oak.  It never looked the same again.
We have removed a few trees from our current place.  We love trees but felt we had to remove them.  We were told one of them had been struck before and landed where our shed is now.  We also had a huge one over our shed.  It has gone now.  I did not like being in the shed in a storm when that was there.  I felt if it were struck it could really do damage to the building and its occupants.
We now have solar and I wonder about the panels but so far so good.
In the Sound of Music they sang “these are a few of my favourite things.”  For me, storms do not even come close.  I am always glad when they are over.  I never cease to marvel at the power they display and how insignificant I am, but if I never went through another one, I would not be disappointed.