Hot + Humid = GROSS

Yep, summer has officially arrived in Maryland. It's hot. It's humid. And there are thunderstorms. In the morning and in the afternoon.

Even if I couldn't go outside first-thing yesterday morning, I had to go out. I had to walk. After the storms had passed, I was ready. I left the house at 10:15 (early lunch!). It was 71 degrees (not too bad) with 84% humidity (bad).

It was gross.

Humidity measures the moisture in the air. Just how bad is 84% humidity? Late yesterday afternoon, while it was raining, the humidity level was 74%. That's ten whole points lower than when it was not raining.

I was hot. But I did it. It's a good thing, too, because we got hit by some wicked storms yesterday afternoon. Check out these pics...

As the storm was rolling in, I snapped this shot from inside of the house.

Then Hubby said, "The sky looks really cool over there." I had to step outside to see (and document) just how awesome the sky looked. Notice the airplane in the pic? You have to look closely. At first glance, I thought it was dirt on my lens. It is towards the top of the frame, just left of the center line. If you click on the image itself, a larger view should pop up. I left the image large intentionally so you could get a closer look.

Here's what the sky looked like to my right.

And here's how it looked on the left. The storm was moving fairly quickly.

It had been thundering for a few minutes at this point, and I could see a few distant flashes of lightning. Then I saw a wicked lightning bolt straight ahead of me, but off in the distance. THEN there was a bolt of lightning that was much closer.

There was enough electricity in the air to change my camera settings!

That's when I went inside.