A Close Shave

We were woken up at 2:30 this morning by thunder! Our roof looked just like you see here. There was intense lightning half a mile away, but we have a huge tree above, and we decided in the heat of the moment that the tree was likely to work as a pretty effective lightning rod. Norah and I scaled the roof under surprisingly bright skies and laid spanning lumber and rolled out plastic in the middle of the night. I guess that the excellent visibility was due to the city lights reflecting off the clouds. We were finished by 3:30 am. It only sprinkled on us for less than a minute, and was so light that it didn't accumulate anywhere. Even still, I had no way of knowing we would get off that easy. As soon as I felt the first drops, the 2x6 lumber I was hauling became feather light. I had reports on Sunday and Monday from people only a few miles away who saw "significant downpours" for up to half an hour. We got off easy this time. Needless to say, we picked up the pace on finishing the roof :)