It was very warm last night -- not quite hot enough to turn on the air conditioner, but warm enough to turn restlessly in bed for a half an hour or so before sleep finally arrived.
I'd been asleep for around four hours when the sound of thunder woke me up.
Wind tossed the trees, their tops moving back and forth in the gusts that shook branches and sent them racing across the lawn.
But it was lightning, cloud-to-ground, that got my attention.
Every ten seconds or so, it would light up my backyard like a pagan god messing around with a giant flash.
First I could see the arc across the sky miles away.
Then it grew closer. The light on my porch went on for a second -- then the nightlight in the next room went dark, and I realized that we had lost power.
The lightning and thunder wasn't unusual -- but the intensity of the storm was something I hadn't seen for a few years, since a tremendous straight-line wind brought trees down all over Glenmoore.
Candidly, it was terrifying.
Alone in the house, I cowered in bed, pondering what could happen if a lightning strike brought down a tree or set the deck on fire.
But not as terrifying, I imagine, as watching your house in Colorado Springs go up in flames, or rowing down your underwater street in Florida.
Weather records are being broken all over the place -- and in a Congress which embraces denial like a sleazy mistress, the EPA has become the enemy.
I'm shocked by the depth of our ability to ignore what is in front of our nose -- or to use it for political gain.
Let's face it, environmental stewardship is not a sexy campaign issue -- except to its enemies.
The northeast has been relatively lucky thus far --but it's anybodies' guess whether our good fortune can hold out...
In the meantime, a lot of us got a taste of what could happen here once Mother Nature turns up the heat a little bit. And I'm guessing that unless we were stormchasers, not many of us enjoyed it.
Welcome to the present.
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