Rain, Rugby and Pink Lightning

OK, how cool is that pic? I'll be honest, I didnt take it, I dont really know how people manage to get pictures of lightning so perfect, as you know, it goes as fast as it appears. This is however what the lightning looked like last Thursday (3rd November).

Leading up to the storms was a few days of big heavy clouds out on the horizon and every person you talked to was just waiting for rain. The morning of the storm though, everyone thought the chance had passed since the skies were empty and the sun was doing its usual "I'll kill you with heat" thing.



So, after a long morning of moaning about the heat (which was boiling, everyone, even the Motswanan's were complaining) by around 3 in the afternoon huge rain clouds had rolled in over our heads and winds started picking up.

I found that the reactions by the kids to the wind (which was quite strong to be fair) were a little over zealous, I mean, running for cover when there was really no need. My reaction was to go outside and stand in the strongest wind I could find enjoying the sudden drop in temperature. At 4, usual closing time, i heard the first crack of thunder in the distance which produced a huge grin on my face as I totally love lightning and the whole lightning storm thing. At around 4.15, when we finally finished work, I was waiting outside for Mike to come back from dropping some kids off when it began raining. (To all you people back home in "Sunny Scotland" or really in most anywhere else in the world but here, rain is not really anything special, here though, its almost as good as money raining from the sky, you miss it so much.) After standing in the rain for 15 mins, getting weird looks from the Motswanans passing by in their cars and running to escape the "heavy rain" (more like a drizzle).

Before too long I was in the car on the way home to get ready for touch rugby with a bunch of local (mostly white) guys. After a quick munch and change we were back in the car on the way to the pitch when the real show began. Both of us had our windows down and were in danger of crashing the car for want of watching the lightning as it lit the grey sky in a pink hue. Once we arrived at the pitch and everyone commented on how the weather was finally perfect for rugby since there was rain and cloud and it was as close to home as it could have been.

So, everyone then went on to play a full 2 hours of rugby under sheets (and I do mean sheets) of pink lightning. My single favorite show of lightning was seeing the lightning start at one point in the cloud and breaking into 5 forks of lightning that raced across the sky from left to right. Was AWESOME!


(Once again, not my picture but close enough to what I saw)