Preface To Lightning: Storm Chasing

Do you remember the movie Twister?  I don't.  I think Philip Seymour Hoffman was in it.  & Helen Hunt.  & either Bill Paxton or Bill Pullman.  Did those guys ever make a movie together?  How would we know?

This is a line I like, which I will probably read on this week's show: "Lightning seeks out the shortest route to something with a positive charge."  The shortest route.  If you are struck by lightning, not only was it because you were positive (better to stay negative), but it was because you were the nearest to wherever the lightning began.  Let that sink in.  You were closest to where the negative side of the lightning was, & you completed the circuit.  Maybe write that on your tombstone?

& no, I've never been anywhere near struck by lightning.  I have been very close, because I know how to count after a lightning strike to figure out its proximity.  Here's a children's website to teach you how to do that.  In case you didn't know.  I don't remember when I learned that, but it's something I've known for a long, long time.  Long enough to know, when I barely get to "five Mississippi," that I need to say, "That was close!"

Thinking about it, I don't remember many thunderstorms in Kentucky.  There was more rain than in Texas, but less storms.  Here, every rain event is a fucking storm.  Perhaps because Fort Worth is on the edge of the plains & storms roll in from the west.  Or maybe because Texas weather is like an eleventh grade thespian - or an eleventh grader period - everything is heightened.  Texas weather is like an eleventh grader relating to a song by the Cure.  It's all hyperbole & superlative.  & I thought that before Hurricane Harvey!

Here in Fort Worth lately it's been hot - not over 100 degrees Fahrenheit hot, but hot - & there's no rain in the forecast at all.  I can't say the same for Kentucky - I believe you guys got Irma rain & it's definitely cooler.  But it doesn't look like there'll be lightning for the show tomorrow night.

But of course I once did a morning show about sunrise in the winter when the sun didn't rise until late in the morning.  Self Help Radio has never claimed to be immediate or even relevant; when it appears it is, it's mostly accident or coincidence.

What do you want?  I don't own an almanac or anything!