I would have been back earlier but...we had a thunder storm. Lots of loud and long thunder, and lightning.

We get thunder about once a year, twice now and then, and lightning that you can see, some years and not others.

I was on the phone with Ds when we heard the first thunder. Ddil ran in from another room, Dh came in where I was, and we all said, "What was that?!"

Before you wonder how lame we all are, we weren't sure, at first, if it was thunder, or an earthquake. There have been some aftershocks of the last one.

Krypto, who's heard thunder maybe twice? barked, and I heard Frankie barking on the phone. I kept off of the phone and computer until all lightning and thunder was done with.

I was counting about 3 between most of the lightning and thunder, Ds was counting about 6, which represents the distance between our houses, I guess. The storm wasn't right over us, but close enough, and everything was very loud.

Meanwhile, we had some radical hail, and we were filling a 5 gallon bucket which is under the downspout, in a couple of minutes. Dh went out to tip the bucket, and said that he wished that he'd had a camera with him. The water out of the downspout, which looked like a little waterfall, was going *completely horizontal* at his head level, so above 6'.

Well, unless more thunderstorms show up, I'm going to answer posts. It is starting to rain very hard again, though. We need to dump out the rain gauge before it overflows!