Wednesday, January 20th, 2021

I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt as more rain starts to fall. The hood’s enough for now. The weather report said that we would only have a twenty percent chance of rain today. The rain now is only falling about twenty percent as hard as it was. It’s a vague dripping drizzle rather than a torrent. I guess they were right. The cats still wander about. The snails haven’t come out yet. Around lunchtime, a volley of thunder shakes the building. I’m immediately alert. When I last worked around here, in the Eighties, the sound of an explosion like that would put everyone on edge. Now, few react. Another similar clap of thunder a few hours later summons a hailstorm. It falls straight down, not at an angle like the rain. I finally have the opportunity to text my local family: “Gang! Gang! The hail’s all here!” It ends quickly. At the afternoon prayers, the building manager tells us that he had seen hail today the size of a falafel ball. Somehow, the floor of the atrium appears dry. I leave work early. I want to be home to watch the American inauguration. I walk through more moments of drizzle. Once I’m home, I see that the power glitched during the day. Some things have reset. Some haven’t. As I turn on the TV, I hear one more, smaller thunderclap and a few seconds of further rain. The clouds quickly give up and drift away.