And Now, We Turn To You, Lindsay, For The Weather

This post brought to you by Google Images.

We've had our fair share of solid storms this spring here in Indiana, including another one just last night. For those of you who may be unacquainted with the particulars of Midwestern storms, I had Google Images take some pictures for you to give you a taste of what it's like.

First the sky turns dark and ominous. Usually it becomes black or very dark gray. Sometimes though, depending on the time of day or the severity of the storm, it may turn purple (when the storm interrupts sunset) or green (duck and cover, this could get ugly!).

Then it starts to rain so hard you can hardly see and it can become so loud you can hardly hear and you end up having to shout to the person sitting next to you in the car if you want him to hear what you're saying. This happened last night as were out and about running a few errands. The already wet ground becomes so overly saturated that mild flooding begins. This also happened last night. Some streets get so bad you can't even drive through them for fear of ruining your car.

And then, there's the lightning. And what a show it can be! Usually the lightning shows spider across the sky, and during some storms the show is pretty constant. The lightning is accompanied by long roars of house-shaking thunder, such as the particularly long clap that welcomed the missionaries we had over for dinner last night just as they were heading back out into the great outdoors on their way to another appointment.

Sometimes during these storms, funnel clouds form. And sometimes these funnel clouds touch the ground and become tornadoes. Though in our short time here we have seen more than our fair share of tornado warnings (as in, conditions for a tornado are perfect and forming funnel clouds may have been spotted in the area), we have not yet experienced an actual tornado. Hopefully, we never do. Just hearing Muncie's tornado sirens sound during practice runs is enough to make the hair on my arms spike and tingle.

When the storm's over, though, it really is over. The clouds clear out, the sky brightens, and everything, though still soaked, feels very refreshed and clean. This morning when we left our apartment, the sun was out (finally!), the birds were singing, and it was, well, very nice. Spring storms have a tendency to be very frightening to one such as myself, but they are exciting, to say the least. Winter storms...well, winter storms are another story entirely. We'll cover those another day.

Cross your fingers that Muncie dries up and stays dry enough for the weekend rummage sales to go on as planned. Blake and I have our eyes on a used washer and dryer which we are planning to investigate further Saturday morning at 7:00 sharp.

Update, 1 hour after the original writing of this post: Well, so much for the singing birds and sunshine...we're back to rain, thunder, and hovering dark clouds. Again. Good grief.