Rainbow Afternoon

I grew up in the Rocky Mountains - on the Wasatch Front of the Salt Lake Valley, to be precise. I had never met a real storm until my family moved to the Midwest. (Yeah, you Gulf Coast people, I know, I've already been told. I don't want to experience that sort of storm, though. Thank you.)

I had never seen rain come down so hard and fast that you couldn't see across the street, or that cars had to pull off the road because their windshield wipers couldn't keep up. I had never seen sheet lightening. I had never heard a tornado siren.

I had never seen so many rainbows.

(this is a real picture, it was one of the MSNBC Photos of the Week a few summers back...)

I love the storms. I love the rain. I let the kids play in it. Mark and I enjoy sitting on the porch swing, watching lightening and the power of nature on display. Just last night, we let the girls stay up late at their bedroom window to watch a storm that rolled in right at bedtime.

On a recent Sunday, we had a real gully-washer. And then the setting sun broke through the clouds. It was spectacular. The sky to the west was full of fiery golden roiling clouds,

and there was a full double rainbow in the east, where the storm was still wringing itself out. Our whole family went out and stood on the front sidewalk to watch. It was still drizzling but no one cared. We just stood there.

And we weren't the only ones. More than one neighbor came out to see the show, too. The lightening and thunder played in the background behind the rainbow. And every few minutes, a huge hand of sheet lightening would go right across the rainbow, the whole sky. We would all gasp and exclaim, just like on the Fourth of July. Hyrum and I quibbled over the camera, each of us wanting to capture the lightening and rainbow together (the neighbor girl got it on video, and she keeps promising me the file...).

My girls did what they do best: danced in the rain, sang at the tops of their little lungs, and ran through the muddy water in the ditch. Mark and I were explaining what makes a rainbow, and why the end of the rainbow is always moving, hence the phrases "chasing rainbows" and "at the end of the rainbow". Gabba was inspired, ran into the house and grabbed a pot, and had me take this picture:
It lasted all of fifteen glorious minutes. Then the wind moved the clouds, or the sun sank too low. Whatever it was, the rainbow faded fast, and all the color drained from the sky. Mark and I shooed the children back into the house for stories, scriptures and prayers.

We should have applauded.