Yesterday, May 31, 2009, was insane. We are right now in a weather pattern with unstable air predicting thunderstorms daily. Very unusual for the Klamath Basin area. We are in the fire season and it should be bone dry out there. Our seasonal stream had already dried out. Usually we worry about dry thunders starting forest fires, but not any rain. We have up here over 300 days of sunshine, so you can understand how dry it gets up here. Lets say it that way, you don't have a lawn if you don't have some form of irrigation.

The last 2 days we had plenty of thunderstorm, but not rain in our area. Yesterday turned out be completely different. We saw the storm coming and were hopeful for some rain. Well it came hard and heavy. First it started to rain for about 2 minutes and then it turned into that nightmare of a storm. Hail for 45 minutes. So strong you could not see more then 30 yards. The hail was in the size of large peas and cherries. It came down so hard that it stripped pine needles of the ponderosa trees. All you smelled was pine. Several branches started to break off and the hail noise was unbelievable. The kitchen roof started to leak around the sky light (which we were going to replace this year any way) because the hail rain mix was pushing so hard that the water backed up under the shingles. All we could do was put up buckets. 

We moved the ice off the deck and then went for a walk into the meadow. What we saw there was horrifying. The stream had come over its banks and all we saw was mice and gophers floating down stream. Many were laying in the meadow trying to survive. I wonder how many of them have died in their holes? We’ve found a gopher that was wet, alive, and scared out of its mind. It tried to attack us by jumping towards us. 

On the upside we saw the most beautiful rainbows and foggy surroundings. So unreal! We saw double rainbows. On an interesting side note, double rainbows are always reverse in spectrum color. Look close at the image and you can see the colors reversed. A rainbow happens when the light reflects in a rain drop releasing the colors of the spectrum. A double rainbow happens when the light reflects a second time on the back side of the same drop generating a much lighter rainbow with reversed colors. This can happen endless times and in rare conditions the viewer can see up to 3 rainbows. After that it is to faint to be picked up by the eye.

This morning we still have hail laying on the ground, 14 hours later. It was only 55 degrees last night. The doors to the shop are open so the concrete can dry up. All my annual flowers have been shredded apart, and the floating water plants in the koi pond as well. The mulch sidewalk around the pond has been washed away. We will have a lot to clean up. Though on the plus side, we don’t have to run the sprinklers for a while.