Tonight, I drove into a storm. And what a storm!

 At first, we were driving south for the weekend. The clouds on the horizon and the setting sun cast the sky in a blazing crescendo of oranges, yellows, and reds in one of those classic Arkansas sunsets.

 But then, as we went farther, and it started to get dark, the brilliant orange steadily faded, one shade at a time, into a smooth sea of grays, purples and dark, dark blues. Shortly after the last hints of daylight vanished, I noticed that the sky ahead of us was flashing. An irregular flash! Flash! Flash-flash...  FLASH!
 I've seen lightning before, but this was something new - huge chunks of the sky lit up, to the right, straight above, far ahead. Some were small, others were massive blasts that chased away every shadow. But they were so *fast,* one after another, or in rushes of two or three at a time. And it was cloudy, so we couldn't see any bolts or direct light, and we never heard any thunder.

 The air was still, but started to feel thick. As if it was filled to the brim with rain, but waiting on some signal to unleash it all-

 And then, out of nowhere, we hit a wall of water!

 My wipers hadn't even been on at all, and all of a sudden I had to turn them all the way up, higher than I'd ever turned them before. Where before there'd been only light, now we saw arcs of lightning, and thunder shook us in the car. Boom followed flash so closely, we knew it was right on top of us.
 And the water...
 It was a moving sheet, in layers, sheets, and thick thick streams. In seconds, it seemed as if we were in a tunnel, with a river in every direction. The lightning changed too, it was all around us, blue-white spears lancing from the sky, too bright to look at even as they lit up our whole world. One struck the ground right next to us, and set something on fire, despite the pouring rain.
 At its worst, the rain was falling so fast and thick that we completely lost sight of the road. The few cars still on the road with us all slowed to twenty miles an hour, and still we all lost sight of each other. For a moment, I doubt any of us thought we would make it any farther - several people pulled off to the shoulder, or at least, their best guess at what was off.

 And then, it stopped. As suddenly as it had started. The rain just stopped falling, the skies opened up and stars peeked through, and the lighting clicked off as if someone had flipped a switch. The storm couldn't have been more than a mile behind us, but every sign of it was gone.

 New experience!