It Rained!

Well, it was a bit more spectacular than rain really.

The last few days here have been a heatwave - your typical offshore flow, with temps in the 100's inland and in the 90's here at the coast.

After another warm night, it was already in the high 80's by 9am this morning and small clouds started to form almost immediately.

By lunchtime, these small clouds definitely looked like thunderheads, so I set off down to Cannery Row as the view of the clouds would be better from there.

I got a treat, lightning and thunder over the peninsula, then over the bay, and then over the hills on the opposite side of the bay.

It also poured with rain for 10 minutes, so I hid out in the entrance to a restaurant.

As you can see from the photo on the right, the storm clouds looked very impressive, and I got lucky and actually captured a lightning strike with my point and shoot camera (although it's not completely in the frame, I'll take it!).

Here you can see the Fish Hopper restaurant in the end of the old Monterey Canning Company building - and the strike is hitting somewhere the other side of the aquarium (it wasn't that close as the thunder took a while to get to where I was).

Although it was a spectacular show, it was not without its downside. Once the storm got across the bay, I could see lightning strikes hitting the hills around the Watsonville / Gilroy area - and later I saw smoke rising, so I suspect there's another wildfire in an area that's already suffered from two in the last few weeks.