Lost in the Andes

A Storm brews at Sunset 

Was this window the culprit

Every year crops like this Plum orchard suffer damage

Vineyard with hailnets

Thunder?

The boombahs came again last night.  My thoughts went back to the first time I heard them here South of the Equator.  It had been another sunny summer day.  As Apollo's chariot began to dip over the Andes it became lost in a fiery swath of color that warned a storm is coming.  Sure enough, with just about enough time for Apollo to safely tuck his horses in at the stable, the light show began.  Lightning flashed, the sky grumbled, and the wind kicked up.  Next I heard the patter of the summer rain but there was something else.

At first I thought one of our windows was slamming open and closed.  But there was something rhythmic about it I couldn’t put my finger on.  I checked all the windows but by now I could tell the periodic crashes were more like thunder in the distance.  But what metronome could control nature.

I looked at my watch and listened ..crash-echo…1..2..3..4..5..6 crash echo…1..2..3..4..5..6.  I knew lighting is nothing more than static discharge as two cloud masses rub across one another.  Also It can be the result of airflow across the earth like a shoe scuffling across the carpet.  Electron mismatches are then corrected when you touch the doorknob.  Could somehow a steady flow of wind across a structure as tall as the Andes result in a steady discharge of voltage in such a way as to be the source of the tympanic cadence I was hearing.

It was several days later when the lady from the garden store at the end of my street explained that air canons with nitrogen are used around Mendoza to crystallize the hail so that it fails as harmless pea sized ice chunks rather than the grape killing piedras, as large fist sized hail is called, that terrorizes farmers in these parts.  Mystery solved and now each time it storms I listen to the boombahs and drink wine that was  made from the grapes kept safe from the piedras South of the Equator.

After the fact I realized this was not the first time I heard the boombahs.  On the other side of the world in Italy they have a similar program though not rythmic.  But thats another story.