Emporia, Kansas – From my driveway I watch clouds roll over the city again. The darkening sky is pierced with lightning. A neighbor family returns home as it begins to sprinkle. The mother watches with me for a moment. There was, she says, a great view of the sky as they drove on the Prairie Street overpass, where her daughter looked into the west and said “It’s the hair of God”.

It is a dramatic sky, more spring-like and welcome than was our weekend blizzard. I drive to an empty lot and watch as the forms intensify, and dark tendrils of rain spread against the rose-colored horizon.