Rain, Rain

We've had several rounds of showers/rain/thunderstorms here and there lately. Last night and today have been particularly full of clouds and precipitation.

Last night, the sky looked like this from the neighboring town, plus there was a tornadic storm not too far out west. (This is looking west.)

This morning, I had to get up at 5. I woke to a steady rain, with occasional thunder. Had to drive Older Son to work in it, which was a nightmare when it was still dark, what with the wet pavement, poor visibility, construction, etc. But we made it over there, and I made it back. It had gotten lighter by the time we got over there, so that helped a LOT.

When I came back in the house, Hubby and Younger Son were in the living room, in the dark. The power had gone off. Just before I got to town, while I was about 3 miles away, I saw a huge lightning bolt hit near town, but that wasn't what caused the power outage. While we were paying attention to all this, we looked out the window, and here came the school bus. Usually, Younger Son is waiting at the corner a half block away, which is the normal stop. But in this case, we ran out to the street and he stopped in front of our house. (Wish we could do that all the time! They had a route change this last week which changed the direction he's coming from.) After awhile, the power came back on.

When I left for work not long after, this is what the sky looked like, with huge mammatus after the rain had moved on east.

After I got home in the afternoon, this is what the sky looked like to our east, lots of big, showery clouds with lots of dark blue everywhere today.

Later on, as Hubby and I were bringing Older Son home from work, we thought this was a cool-looking cloud. I called it "two-toned." It seems to be light against the dark background and dark against the lighter background. As we were coming through the town he works in, we saw a big-city "weather tracker" vehicle, so they were evidently out watching the storms.

I took the dog out for a walk after we got home. This is coming back on our route, looking east. Still the dark blue cloudy/rainy sky, which has been prevalent today.

Our dog likes the water, she is half lab after all. :)

By this evening, most of the rainy stuff had moved on out, and we had a pretty, pale-peach sunset. It's nice and cool out, with evening birds singing, such as robins and our resident mockingbird.