A Rainbow Within The Storm

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While walking Eva in the late evening some rain clouds began to develop in the distance. The rainstorm was small and localized, surrounded by late-evening, clear sunshine, but it was slowly moving toward us. As the moisture-laden air approached, we saw a rainbow beginning to form.

A little farther along the road...

And then a few minutes later...

Just as I snapped the last shot, a long horizontal steak of lightning flashed through the width of the cloud cover terminating at the rainbow. I had been about a nanosecond too soon. That would have made an excellent photograph.

Mike told me that he had seen some weird colors among the rainclouds here in Tucson during last year's Monsoon Season, which reportedly begins around the fourth of July. So perhaps I will be able to capture some interesting weather-related snapshots in the upcoming weeks.

As often happens with the elderly, the sight of that stormlet brought to mind the memory of some published pictures of Arizona storms in a Photography magazine back in the 1950s (or 60s) that had been taken and contributed by the late Senator Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater lost his 1964 presidential campaign against incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson by a landslide. The Johnson campaign capitalized on Goldwater's extreme anti-Communist views and his admission in a television interview that he would consider launching a nuclear attack on Vietnam.



I have often speculated on how different might be the present-day world if (AuH2O in 64) Mister Goldwater had indeed become president back then.

So much for rainbows and other assorted promises.

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