Lightning Right Under the Rainbow!

Today was a good Lord's Day right on the heels of yesterday's extraordinary evening after receiving emergency phone alerts with a tornado warning for our area. "Tennis ball size hail," news was saying.

 

While bringing in all the flower boxes and hanging baskets, I hoped and prayed our gardens wouldn't be severely damaged by hail.  We and a visiting family stood out on our deck for a long time watching storm clouds and lightning that gave 4th of July fireworks a run for their money.  

 Jonathan had just installed the flower box gizmos that hold the boxes on the rails of our deck. He and Danny amaze me with their good work on our deck, including the extras of putting up flower boxes just for the wife, mom, and daughters. 

You can just lift the red flower boxes off the gizmos and take them inside in the event of a storm, and then put them back out again. They have so brightened our deck.  

 

Rain started pouring after a while, and about nine o'clock, we were smelling smoke. I immediately suspected a lightning strike somewhere, but Jonathan downplayed my worries.  

 

A few minutes later, a rainbow formed in the clouds, with lightning flashing in the distance underneath the rainbow! I had never in my life seen such a phenomenon! 

Lightning strike after lightning strike zigzagged under the rainbow, like a devilish fiend striking out in hatred at our beautiful and unrelentingly powerful Lord. 

No matter how the dark clouds lit up with lightning under the rainbow, it remained there,

arched serenely and securely against the stormy sky. 

Just like our Lord!

No matter how His enemies howl and scorn Him, He is forever Maker of the universe, Master of every storm, and Matchless King. 

By 9:30, sure enough the White River sirens were wailing and Crystal and I rushed to the hall to shout for Danny who is on the fire department now and who was in his bedroom. He plummeted down the stairs to pull on boots and hurry off, with Hannah opening and closing the gate behind him. 

 

A few minutes later, we saw flashing lights going up the hill on the road the other side of the river and assumed it might be Danny. It was. A grass fire, apparently sparked by lightning, had caught hay bales on fire, and Danny was not home again until midnight. Two other fires were happening at the same time not far from there, and Danny later told us a neighboring fire district called for help, so several of White River district went to help. While it had poured rain here for a bit, it had not rained at all in those spots. Lightning had started fires.

By morning, we were seeing photo after photo on Facebook of some of the most obvious tornado funnels you've ever seen, especially from Gary, SD, area, (photos above are screenshots Jonathan got) which is actually a few hours from us to the east. But there was also a tornado about 1 hour away, destroying structures, etc., near Kadoka, where friends of ours live. Jonathan was up several times in the night with the wind doing weird things and causing strange noises.