Intense storms

It's spring borderline early summer here in Brisbane. Currently the sky is a milky white, and its cool enough almost for a light denim jacket. The ground is wet from evening storms that went mostly through the night. Its good here when its been raining. The air has a earthen smell, palpable and almost metallic and the trees look a rare green versus their usual blue grey green colour.

The sun comes up here in Brisbane about 4 am. So the day starts pretty early for some. Getting up for work at 6am is not the chore that it seemed in the UK. Audrey and I are still blurry eyed, putting clothes on back to front and Jack, bless him, stands in the corridor not understanding where he is and rubbing his eyes and scratching his tufty bed head.

As I say, its approaching summer and we are now beginning to see the approach of storm season. We've had two days of intense storms, predominantly dry electrical storms which begin high in the atmosphere, in the west, over the desert, charging the clouds and the air and decending over the more lush coastal regions.

On the way home last night, I was crossing Story bridge on the 222 Bus. Story Bridge is a huge metal bridge in the traditional iron girder heavy engining style. It spans fantastically over the river Brisbane to Kangaroo Point which has a magnificent panoramic of the city frontage and ferries passing underneath. The Australians drive like lunatics across it – despite the long drop to imminent death below, and on to high rise apartments I might add.

All around, the sky was slate black and lightning flashed and arced behind buildings. It looked like a movie set. Almost artificial blasts of blue light and long dramatic streaks of lightning flew across the sky with very little rain. It was practically a dry electrical storm. Straight form Ghost busters. I was hoping for a dramatic hit on one of the big skyscrapers. All very entertaining.

We're to expect a good week of this – and you can feel it in the air.

You get this enormous build up of humidity, suddenly you start sweating, and the clouds build and build, getting blacker and blacker. Then, enormous flashes of light rip the sky, and a sudden pressure of icy cold decends rapidly causing the wind to build, moving the warm heat from the air.

People like the lightning here. The sky is so big that you really feel small and exposed in a way I never felt back home.