At 0700, I was awakened by thunder of all things. I went outside to see a high based Cb directly overhead, with cloud-to-ground lightning strikes every few minutes within a mile of my house. The storm then moved north into the Sierra Nevada foothills without dropping any rainfall at my house.

Later on (at 1400), an Ac deck moved up from the south. This didn't give us any more thunder or lightning, but we did get a brief rain shower out of it from 1420 to 1430. We didn't get enough rain to measure, but it was all we needed to make July 1998 the 24th month in a row we've had a trace or more of precip - which is quite rare for a place that usually gets two months with zero rainfall each year.

Although the rain and thunderstorms had not been forecast by the NWS or any of the local TV stations, I was not all that surprised by them. Accas began forming over the valley late Saturday afternoon and persisted throughout the evening - an occurrence I've often seen precede early morning thunderstorms during the summer months. Recognizing this possibility, I cleaned my rain gauge on Saturday night. Although my rain gauge barely got wet on Sunday, it was better than having to frantically clean the gauge as the storm hit (as I've done in the past).

Before I close, I thought I'd make a brief mention of my snow trip to the Sierra Nevada last Tuesday (you heard that right). There was still plenty of snow above the 8000 foot elevation, especially in shady areas. I uploaded a picture of myself standing next to a pile of snow at Tioga Lake (elevation 9800 feet) to my web page - if you're interested in seeing it, it's at: