A Lot of Buckets Full

July 27, 2020

Yesterday I was starting to paint. Sitting right here at this table, I noticed on radar there was a thunderstorm that popped up over downtown Atlanta. 15 miles to the west. I like to check the radar. For rain. For planes. Within twenty minutes it thundered twice as I painted with white One-Shot. Then it began to rain. All within just a few minutes of being sunny.

Until then we had had mostly blue skies. It had been very hot — very sunny. It rained and rained heavily. It rained fast. I was still painting but the mist began to accumulate on my project. Beading up like on the hood of a fresh wax job. The wind blew. It ran me off. I left the painting in the mist and wind. Thunder storms are always exciting.

Within about ten minutes we had over half an inch of rainfall . And after an hour we had a total of 1.7” on my digital weather station. So help me think about this ….. between my wonderings and my wife asking her engineer-minded dad we came up with the numbers. On my property which is over 1.5 acres we accumulated approximately 73,419 gallons of rain. A total of 608,820 lbs. of rain. That is on my yard alone. For comparison a car weighs 5000 lbs. give or take. So what about the rain falling on my street? Or the whole road. Or a square mile ? Thats a lot of water. That a sea of rain. That’s more than I can get my brain wrapped around. Fish in the sky! Good golly – great scott all mighty!

So if there was no rain on radar and within an hour and a half we had this much rainfall where was it ? Where was the 608,000 lbs. in the air? How does 73,419 gallons of water appear and then fall out of what was a clear sky? Onto my painting ? How does it all stay up above? No strings. No containers. No support beams or tanks. No tubes. You don’t have to worry about it but I might need to.

Right now the sky is all blue. But where is the water ? How does that weight float. I thought I believed in gravity. I don’t know anymore. Water can be pretty. Thunder too. You just have to know the rules. Or, maybe it’s best to not know they even exist.

Does anyone have a big tank I could use?

Fun times to you,
Kyle BlackCatTips Brooks