Blue skies

Last night we went to bed with a spectacular lightening storm starting up and this morning the lightening and thunder was our alarm clock.  It really poured and there is nothing like a lightening storm on the prairie to make lightening look that much brighter and bigger.  This afternoon while working on project work we heard a thumping on the roof like someone was up there just banging away.  Hail! I don't believe I have ever seen hail as big as this was and coming down so hard.  Most pieces were about golf ball size and visitors up on the top portion of the park reported seeing some come down almost baseball sized. (I didn't see any of those but I imagine they could have been.) We a few visitors come in with cracked windshields and just about everyone sustained some kind of damage to hoods and roofs on their cars.  It was fast paced and amazing.  It moved in really rapidly, dropped its load and then moved right on out with heavy rain for a while.  I am sure the streams are now flowing everywhere in the park.  Right now I am watching the clouds swirl around the top of the buttes but the sun is shining on us and the strong portions of the storm are over according to the weather bureau.  Wow!

There are several TRTs in the park this year and it will be fun working with them all to see what kinds of ideas we will be able to generate.  I'm sure there will be a lot of projects in the works in the next few weeks. 
As I was last year, I am again amazed at how beautiful the Badlands are.  Although I feel a bit anxious about starting up my programs this year, I think I will enjoy them more because I am not as overwhelmed by the amount of learning and studying I need to do to simply sound like I might know a little something about the park.  Not to say there is not so much more to learn, but at least I know my basic information.  I went along on another ranger's talks this morning and she was awesome.  Despite the fact she was racing the weather at her 8:30 geology talk her talk was very informative and the visitors enjoyed it while standing in the cold wind watching the lightening very carefully in the distance. See it is not all glory. 

So as that wonderful blue sky starts to appear and the bird out front sings I wish everyone could be with me to experience the magnitude of the Badlands.