Looking at the forecast a while back, trying to figure out whether we’d actually be hit by thunderstorms, I played with the radar view on the online map and saw – for the second or third time in as many days – some heavy activity in Upstate New York. The stuff that was headed our way.
Brought back some intense memories of my first summer after college, when I was living with two others in a neighborhood that fluctuated between Italian during the day and black ghetto at night. Much of it, I should add, has since been leveled, at least from what I see in the satellite photos of the neighborhood.
We lived on the second floor, with a porch on the front that overlooked the street as well as windows in the parlor and dining room that looked out into the foothills – or mountains down the valley, as this flatlander viewed them. Still, it seemed that most late afternoons that June included a dramatic thunderstorm rolling in. The mountains would disappear in swirling gray and then emerge in slices, at best, before becoming whole again. It was nothing like anything I’d viewed in the Midwest.
The radar, of course, doesn’t present that part of the experience. But for me, at the time, it was magical.
Don’t think I’ve ever viewed a thunderstorm quite the same since, either.
Jnana's Red Barn 
Thunderstorm in the mountains, on the beach, in an airplane, out in the middle of the ocean, in the desert, … rain always has a magical feel to it.