T & L & SWBDR & TPOF storms

Last night as i lay in bed with the window open wide, listening the first spattering of rain outside on the patio mingling with Croftie's muted sleepy breathing, having just set down my copy of The Boy Detective Fails, already mulling over the next day's schedule what with all the organizing of shelves and displays i have to do and coming up with a 'flow-chart' for my non-existent website to be constructed in my dreamweaver class, i realized that what i was listening to were the inaugural few baby-steps of the first thunderstorm of the season.

And my pensive mood got the meteorologist in me got to thinking. Whenever i am reading online forecasts or predictions on the weather channel its always reads 'T-storms' or 'Strong T-storms.' For brevity's sake I think the designation is fine. As an accurate descriptor it misses the mark. As the first peel of thunder crinkled its opening measures into my ear before deepening, cracking into that lingering 'boom' noise that always concludes thunder like its own odd form of weather punctuation, i wondered, why focus on the thunder? Surely the noise itself isn't the defining factor of the 'T-storm,' right? I mean, the noise wouldn't even exist without the lightning part, its the electrical discharge that tears through the ether, physically ripping the air to produce the thunder sound, but few people go the whole 9 and refer to these phenomena as Thunder and Lightning Storms (and even there the thunder gets sentence priority). And I've never seen a news or web blurb, 'Warning: T & L Storms!' Its not the thunder that creates property damage or downs power lines, yet it is the thunder that has captured the imagination, its the thunder that has acquired the nomenclature and the mythology, 'God bowling with the Angels' explains away the sound but doesn't exactly take into consideration the brilliant flashes of light now does it?

But I suppose if we are going to include lightning in the name we might be opening the door for other, increasingly less necessary descriptors. Its a slippery slope from thunder storms to thunder and lightning storms to thunder and lightning and strong winds bringing drenching rain and the possibility of flooding storms.