Summer Storms

When I was a kid they were terrifying. near-daily through July and August a storm would roll through in the late afternoon, about 4 or 5 p.m., and great big swollen bursts of thunder would shake the house. The rain lashed the roof for only about 30 minutes or so, and then it all would disappear, just as quickly as it'd come in. That wasn't even that long ago, 10 years at most, but they've already started going away. The lawns turn brown in the summer now, so starved for rain, and clouds press together overhead but never darken and surge. Nobody talked about the drought last year, but we all felt it. Maryland is a humid subtropical climate, but suddenly the sky dried up, and the sun burns like a pillar into our soil now. By heat index, we were hottest in the country a few weeks ago. 115 if you're sitting outside on the asphalt. In the mornings, before it gets hot, I pray for hurricanes.