And the rains came

The forecast had called for rain all weekend. The mid-day sky had been clear and blue, but as the late afternoon turned to early evening huge masses of dark gray and black clouds rolled in and prematurely darkened the world. Finally, a magnificent storm hit us, with lightning and thunder and rain falling thick and hard. After forty-five minutes or so, the storm slowed to a trickle, then spent the rest of the evening unable to make up its mind about how to behave, turning from torrents to drizzles to no rain, all in a pattern none of us could know.

Normally, I would have loved this night. As I've said before, I adore thunderstorms. I even enjoyed this one to some degree.

What stopped me from really loving it was the fact that tonight was our fireworks party. We had over twenty-four-hundred bucks of fireworks, more than 1,200 pounds of explosives, staged and ready to go, and the storm came.

We'd prepared as best we could, of course: We'd covered the staging area with tarps, put the devices on the tarps, and wrapped them in yet more tarps, all tucked into each other and weighted down with bricks.

The water still got in, as we found out when the shower abated enough that we decided to shoot in the drizzle. It was a difficult show. Roughly a third of the fireworks wouldn't go off, our lighters and matches wouldn't hold fire, and coordination was a nightmare.

Despite all that, however, we managed a pretty darn good performance, with some outright spectacular moments. As always, those of us on the launch team stood under the fireworks and had the best seat in the house. The noises, the smells, the amazing light shows: I love it.

I do wish, though, that the rain had come after our show, but so it goes. It was still, on balance, a good time and a good show.