Friday, January 22, 2021

Fire and Lightning

On tower and I think it was Tuesday when we had a schedule 5, the highest fire danger rating. We were expecting rain, lightning even. As the afternoon wore on, I watched the rain radar on my phone and strange bugs came to visit me. Check out this critter. She's lime green, including the lacework of her wings.

 

An interesting distraction, this bug, as I heard the spotter pilots from other districts begin swapping details on the system bearing down on them at four in the afternoon. 'Yeah, there's a cell to the north west but haven't seen any lightning yet.' 

I was watching the cloud formation gather and work towards me. I rang the office and asked them to look up the 0 -2 hour strikes to the west of our area. I can't get it on my phone. By five, I was sitting at the top of a granite mountain, with a comms tower beside me and a huge motherfucking lightning cloud right overhead.

It must have looked like a funny Adams Family cartoon, if I wasn't so terrified. I rang the boss. 'I'd like to go home now please,' I said in a small voice and to his credit, he asked me to call him from the car park when I got back down the mountain.

That night, I sat up in bed and watched lightning charge around the inlet. Rain ... deep heavy drops of rain fell all night. Selkie is not a thunder-hider-under-the-bed-kinda-dog. She spent all night bolting out through the mosquito blinds to sort out this thunder and lightning thang. I didn't get much sleep (and was ambushed by mosquitos. So, thanks Selkie. 'No worries', says my dog. 'Just protecting you from that thunder monster.)

The next morning I got the message that it was schedule 0 because of rain. 'But I still want you up there,' said my boss and I knew it was because of the lightning. Below is a map of the lightning strikes that occurred that night. 


Here's one for where I live:

 

I climbed the mountain and the forest smelled amazing. It was the smell of a hot and dank forest under stress, quieted by a summer rain. Scents of rot and death and germination. Frogs and cicadas chanted and I could feel the relief of every critter there. Lightning rain holds the super power of nitrogen. No tiger snakes either, which is a fringe benefit, for me.

Still, it was a hard climb. I'm quite fit this far into the fire season but this day was hard on me because of the heat and humidity. By the time I got to the peak, I had to wipe my face and catch my breath before radioing in.

As I watched, the neighbouring districts chimed in. It seems they got the lightning but not the rain. By 1100 hours, I heard the spotters calling in smokes:  'Attention required, lightning strike ... attention required, lightning strike', over and over again.

8 comments:

  1. You have no idea how exotic your life sounds to me--and you write about it so beautifully.

    I love your strange bug visitor. The lacework of her wings is a work of art.

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    1. It's funny, the word exotic. I'm not getting out the dictionary tonight but it seems that it means a life far removed from our own existence. So in turn, your life as a teacher in North America, with all its current travails, is exotic to me!

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  2. I agree with Jennifer. I am always envious, even when I hear of your climb up in the heat and humidity. BTW, we have green flies like that here which are called, 'Lacewings'.

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    1. It's an elemental, if occasionally alarming and sometimes tedious job. Thanks for the lacewings mention. I've only seen two of these bugs in my life. Both were sunning themselves on the firetower window at 420 metres. I'll look them up.

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  3. Beautiful bug. Yes, that was SOME lightning storm. I'v enever experienced an all-nighter like that. I was awake on and off all night. I looked out the window at one point and was completely blinded by a flash that whited out the entire sky - like someone had shone high beam headlights directly at me. I think we can expect a lot more of these electrical storms with advancing climate change. We got a very welcome 8.5mm of rain.

    Apparently one of the blocks lit up again, so I heard. Or maybe it was just smouldering from being burnt a while ago.

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    1. Wasn't it amazing?
      I was nearly hit a few years ago. It forked into the ground right beside me. I was driving and it shook the car. Scared the shit outta me. I couldn't decide whether to stop and cop another one or drive through it. That light was blue/white and like you described.

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  4. The lightning map is a shocker. Thank goodness you got some rain in your spot.

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    1. Lightning maps are freaking awesome. You can see huge systems moving across Country. We rely on several different platforms to show us what's going on. Landgate and Himawari are my personal faves. The BOM map shows lightning strikes using colours that blend into everything else. It's an individual thing!

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