Going a bit off of the path of comparing how the values are of some in the USA versus Philippines, I am going to do my best on a topic we all know about. Forgive me though if my science is a bit rusty as this isn’t my strong area.

Perhaps my memories of storms are colored a bit by my childhood and perspective, but I must say it seemed like the storms that produced lightning in the Philippines were a lot easier to deal with except the hurricanes or typhoons. Those were never fun and I will not miss them. From my memory, I recall the lightning rarely struck the ground or got very close. Most of it was cloud to cloud lightning.

As I brought up this to my hubby, he reminded me of how Lake Michigan shears off the bottom portion of any storm system 5 miles inland protecting those who live close to the shore from any truly bad weather. That doesn’t stop it from making you cringe from the violence above you though. But if that is true for a Great Lake and the land, I would guess the same would hold true for the Philippines which is made up of islands surrounded by the Pacific and large bodies of water. It would explain why the storms didn’t seem as bad and why I rarely heard of lightning striking the ground.

But what is the lightning like in Wisconsin during a strong thunderstorm? Quite simply, you watch the weather reports and hope the orange and red clouds do not pass over your city. There is nothing you can do to stop it and they seem to hit the ground nearby with alarming frequency. At least alarming to me, I just do not care for those storms. For Goryo, he’s been through a lot of these storms and has watched or seen the effects of lightning strikes that hit the same tree twice. That tree was less than 100 feet away from him!!

Perhaps in my beginning stages of understanding meteorology, the introduction of the book Wisconsin: Forward! best sums it up in this one paragraph:

“Wisconsin is a middle aged, middle-size, medium hot, medium cold state. It is located halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. It is not close to the Atlantic Ocean and not close to the Pacific Ocean.” Temperatures range from 10 below Celsius (-50 Fahrenheit) to 43 Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) and days with snow ranging from 43 to 140 depending on what part of the state you live in.

So yep, limang taon living in Wisconsin and I’m still not used to the weather.

Anah

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