Lightening Storm

First- I seriously am regretting leaving my camera in Holden. Last night was UNREAL! I've never seen or been through anything more life threatening. So...sorry no pics- just use your imagination.

My niece, Dawson, and I went to the Kanab Cowboys football game in Enterprise last night. We got there, started watching the game...randomly we would see lighting that lit up the entire sky. It was pitch black, and then BOOM! At the time, it looked so cool and I started wishing I had my camera to take pics. With 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter- we notice the lighting was getting really close....and we were sitting on metal bleachers...with no cover... and water everywhere because it had been raining. Did I think I was in the red zone... yes at the time...until later.

The ref's called the game- told everyone we had to get in the gym, in a car, or under the pavilion. My family and I went to our individual cars. I turned on the radio just to kill time and it was perfect timing to hear, "Severe lighting and thunderstorm warning for Iron County, Northeast Washington County, especially 12 miles north of Enterprise and hitting New Castle. Destructive hail storm. Winds up to 70 mph. Stay AWAY from windows, find shelter immediately. Storm lasting from 9:25-!0:45." Needless to say I was really freaked out. I was going to head south to my mom's and go the st. George route, but we decided i could probably get ahead of the storm. I was nervous because anyone who's been the Cedar route to Enterprise knows that there is a turn off just about 12 miles north of enterprise at the junction.

We start driving..I'm trying to hurry to get ahead of this thing, but instead I drove right into the middle of it. Hail the size of golf balls..possibly bigger was beating on us in every direction. I thought to myself- maybe this is actually the red zone of danger... It was kind of scary, but we were okay. Then, we made it to the turn...started over highway 56...little did I realize there were power poles and power lines crossing over highway 56 for a good 5 miles. All of the sudden- about 40 yards in front of us BOOM! Lightning hit a power poles, I swear the ground lit up, and sparks were flying EVERYWHERE! I tried to gradually slow down because we didn't want to get hit by the power line. We made in through, but hail and lightening were flashing every 2 seconds all around us. You could tell when it was hitting the ground too. We quickly said a prayer and we DID beat the storm to Cedar City by 20 minutes.

Now... after we made it to the beginning of the storm and just passed, on the left side of the road was a HUGE herd of deer! Here we did slam on our brakes because they were everywhere! I would say over 20 deer. I wish my thoughts were to look for a buck...but they were

"Great...now we have to worry about deer!"

For some reason, after what we'd been through this seemed to be so funny. lol! Anywho- I know most of us heard and saw the north end of the storm... so hopefully you have some kind of idea of what the middle was really like. After we got home and watched the storm hit cedar, I watched with a little worry. In the sense that, I'm no longer naive about lightening never hitting me and the realization of how 'real' lightening can me.