Severe thunderstorm warning!
Lightning, and thunder, and rain…! Oh my (1)! 
A thunderstorm “supercell” crossed Livermore from the south this evening around suppertime and died as quickly as it began, against the hills of Mount Diablo (1, 2).
“So what!” you say.
It is June, and thunderstorms (always rare in the Bay Area) are particularly rare in spring and summer, since the months of those seasons are usually dry.
This morning, an Oakland-to-Burbank flight was struck by lightning over the Monterey Peninsula. The plane returned to Oakland, and the passengers flew later in the morning, on a different plane. A low-pressure area spinning off the coast is responsible for the unusual weather.
I saw only one lightning flash and heard only a few thunder claps this evening. There were only two real downpours. Still, for a man who grew up in the Midwest and really MISSES powerful thunderstorms, they were enough. In the first house we ever owned, in Ohio, we once had standing water on a gently sloped lawn! Three inches of rain fell in one hour from that storm! We hoped that the electricity to the sump pump would not go out. There IS no sump pump in this house in California, and no need for one.
The skies are clear now. For awhile, even the meteorologists were excited to have a “Midwest-style thunderstorm” to track. Now we have late evening sunshine from the sun setting in the Pacific.
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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