| Bursting |
[Feb. 8th, 2017|08:35 pm]
rejectomorph
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A few minutes ago I went out to the back porch to check on the feral cats and was just in time to see an impressive downpour. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say I was just in time to hear and impressive downpour, as the rain can't be seen all that well in the dark. The clouds are right on the ground, fogging the nearby lights, and strong gusts of wind are blowing. The noise of rain and wind was so loud that it completely drowned out the croaking of the frogs. The frogs themselves probably won't drown, though at one point it seemed as though there was more water than air in the atmosphere.
The feral cats won't drown, either— at least the two who were on the back porch won't drown. One is on a chair, and the other is napping on a cushion in the cupboard. The third back yard cat hasn't been around since very early Monday morning. This is the intact male tabby who was not part of my original feral cat colony, but a stray who decided to spend more and more time here over the last year and a half. I think he's pretty old, and not very healthy, so it's possible that he went off somewhere to die, away from people and other cats. If he has, at least he was able to spend his last year or so being amply fed and having a safe place to sleep. I'll miss him, even though he made a pest of himself to Shorty, the black cat. He had a crush on Shorty, and was always rubbing against him, but Shorty just wanted to be left alone. He won't miss the missing cat.
There is to be a penumbral lunar eclipse Friday night but it starts before the moon rises here and will be nearly over by the time it does. Most likely it will still be too cloudy here— still raining, if fact— for me to see it anyway. Penumbral eclipses are not very much to look at, in any case, as the moon just gets dimmer for a while instead of being covered with Earth's darkest shadow. There's also a comet passing by, its path being closest to Earth on Saturday, but it's going to be too dim to see with the naked eye, so that's a bust, too.
But we are supposed to get five days without rain starting this weekend. It's going to get colder at night with the clouds gone, so that would be another reason not to spend a lot of time outside watching the sky. I'ts not very cold out tonight at all. In fact, the nocturnal low here tonight is predicted to be one degree higher than the daytime high was. It's an unusually warm storm for this time of year. I appreciate the fact that it is going to save me a couple of bucks on my power bill next month. |
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