No, this isn’t about global warming. But if there can be “Christmas in July,” well, perhaps there can be “July in October!” (not as big a jump as the former, and in the opposite direction).
One day back in July, I set out on my regular walk at Ballou Park. The day was already starting off very “humidly.” And over in the west, a great deal of humidity was approaching as great clumps of puffy cumulus clouds floating elegantly beneath an expanding nimbus cloud background, which had steadily expanded to cover half of the sky.
This “nimbus gray” was an even shade, with no concentrated darker dabs peppering that smooth, half-sky canvas.
The sun still held some sway, brilliantly lighting up those puffy cumulous clouds, and making it seem like they had been purposefully painted on that gray background matrix.
Because of the background of that part of the sky being grey, instead of its usual blue, there was a much greater contrast between it and the cotton-like cumulous clouds, making them look almost angel white.
I didn’t check to see if that huge nimbus spread had a silver lining down near the horizon. But even if it did, it would have been hard to notice. My retinas already overcome by the cumulous clouds’ shade of white, which was almost as bright as sunlit snow.
That grayed section of sky reminded me of an old B-western or B-science fiction movie in which, for purpose of convenience in filming, a night filter had been used to turn day into night (a sunlit cloud becoming a moonlit cloud).
Just then, something darted up from the ground a few feet ahead of me. When it came back down and landed, I saw it was a Red Admiral butterfly. I said to myself, “Little butterfly, better take cover, for a summer storm is on the way.”
I heard a strange, distant rumble, which turned out to be the mixed sounds of a distant passenger jet and the sound of far-off thunder. Just like the mixture of nimbus and cumulous clouds above, there was a mixture of jet and thunder noise. An oscilloscope might have shown “blips” of thunder over a baseline of droning jet engines.
The breeze picked up, as it always does with an approaching thunderstorm. It was outmatched when I walked into the vicinity of a couple of City of Danville Public Works bush hogs! That “bush hog breeze” in stereo brought dust and grass clippings swirling about. The grass clippings smelled so richly delicious as to inspire “vinaigrette” thoughts (the fact that I had no vinaigrette with me was probably a good thing).
I thought I caught a “breath of rain” in the air, but there were no dark wet drops on the gray pavement. Another “whiff” identified it as chlorine in the park’s splash pad water system (chlorinated rainwater would probably be too much of a good thing).
At this point in my exercise walk, I passed by a large, bright white mushroom growing in the shadow of a low-hanging sapling branch (shadows are good for growing mushrooms).
From that mushroom to the spreading top of the anvil-mushroom-shaped cloud above Danville’s Ballou Park required only a quick, upward glance for an analogy in the making. I recognized the groundward mushroom as being of a benign, non-toxic variety; and wondered if that great, skyward, mushroom-shaped storm would prove benign as well, at least as far as the people presently enjoying Danville’s Ballou Park was concerned.
By the end of my walk, I could tell by the angle of the thunderhead’s topmost cirrus cloud swirls that Ballou Park had nothing to fear from that great “mushroom” in the sky.”
Just like the asteroid which comes close to hitting Earth, but doesn’t, because of its direction being off by just the most minute fraction of a degree. The direction of that great skyward storm was askew just enough to cause it to be of no danger, either to the fun of the Ballou Park splash pad kids, nor the exercise of the old man.
