"Lightning out of Place"

LIGHTNING OUT OF PLACE

June 2003

When I was growing up here on the Kenai Peninsula, usually once a summer, we would be inside the house and hear a booming noise. Since we were in no normal jet path, the likelihood of a sonic boom was slight. So we knew—especially if we had previously spotted threatening black cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon on an otherwise sunny afternoon—that were probably hearing thunder. Typically, we would hurry outside to the front or back porch, hoping maybe to see some lightning and hear some more thunder. In this part of Alaska, thunder and lightning are rare, although less so in the mountains where the air pressure is more volatile than out here in lake-and-ocean country. If we were lucky, we might see three or four lightning strikes in 5-10 minutes before the show was over. Always it was a big deal. At times it seemed less common than earthquakes, certainly more unusual than the aurora borealis. On hike with two friends last week, however, I had a thunder-and-lightning experience different than at any time in my life. With me were Drew O’Brien, who has lived here about 40 years, and David, who has lived here nearly 45 years. All three of us have spent a great deal of time outdoors, much of it in the mountains. None of us had experienced anything like this in Southcentral Alaska. And what’s more: When it was all over, it appeared that no one else had even noticed.

The three of us had had a beautiful sunny hike up from the Sterling Highway to a mountain saddle on the Skyline Trail, and we had left the main trail behind to follow what is essentially an animal path down through a valley between a pair of prominent ridgelines. Our plan was to hike all the way around the peak and ridge on our left and then return to the highway via a different route. We knew that, at the end of the valley we were descending lay an illegal horse camp and a trail. As we approached the camp, however, we could see, over our right shoulders, huge dark clouds piling up over the ridgelines. We knew it was likely that we might get dumped on by a brief mountain downpour. But as we headed downhill from the horse camp, we heard thunder for the first time…. To make a long (and electrifying) story short, we heard perhaps 50 peals of thunder on our descent, and we saw maybe 30 flashes of lightning. In the beginning, the interval between lightning and thunder was nearly 10 seconds. Later on, lightning and thunder were almost simultaneous, the action so close to us that were ducking on the trail and cringing as the thunder boomed directly overhead—so loud it seemed as if the sky were breaking. Meanwhile, the rain started and quickly evolved from scattered drops to a light shower and on to a deluge.

We were scuttling along in one of the heaviest rains I’ve ever encountered. Puddles were forming on a sloped trail. I was soaked through, and everything in my knapsack that was not encased in plastic became saturated. My boots and socks bubbled with water as I walked. My bare legs were flecked with mud. And all we could was keep moving, and try to laugh despite being scared.

We had almost three miles to cover from the first sound of thunder until we reached Drew’s truck back out near the highway. Water was running over the blacktop as he drove us back to the original trailhead, where our other vehicles awaited. The thunder-and-lightning show had lasted 60-90 minutes. And—as we all suspected might be the case—the entire storm was very localized. In Anchorage to the north, we learned later, they had had a beautiful day; in fact, they set a record-high temperature (79 degrees) for that date. And here at home, they saw no lightning, heard no thunder, and had no rain. Here, the kids were so hot in the afternoon sunshine that they stripped naked and run in the sprinkler on the lawn. Here, when I arrived, Karen was feeding the kids dinner picnic-style outside on the porch. Here, everything was still sunny and bone dry.

I trudged sloppily into the garage, where I had to wring out the sopping-wet contents of my pack and actually dump out standing water from the bottom. Nothing I had worn or carried was remotely dry.