BY LESLIE REGO
During the night I was awakened several times by lightning strikes that lit up the sky and thunder that followed shortly afterwards. The lightning competed with this month’s supermoon, which peeked out from time to time between the cloud cover.
A supermoon is at its closest point to the Earth in its monthly orbit and thus appears slightly larger than a normal full moon. Apparently the difference between a regular moon and a supermoon is similar to the difference between a quarter and a nickel. This is not a significant difference, and can be difficult for us to detect. A supermoon also may or may not appear brighter, but it certainly takes on a powerful mystique. Last night, between the lightning flashes and the shifts of cloud cover, the moon certainly took on an air of secrecy, playing games with me.
The sky went from very black to sudden white, then back to black. Sometimes I saw just the flash, other times just the moon. It was as if the moon wanted to keep me constantly guessing. The few times the moon peeked out from behind a dark cloud, in unison with a lightning flash, the sky lit up with an eerie glow.
Sometimes I did not see the moon at all, but just the glow from the moon. A lightning flash would come and the glow would gleam over certain areas of the terrain. Other times the combination of lightning and moon became incandescent and would turn into an ongoing, dazzling display of light. When the cloud cover descended once again, the light from the moon would flicker and glimmer. A lightning strike would come and the flickering would intensify.
I was only treated to rare glimpses of the supermoon, but in combination with the lightning, those glimpses showed the power of Nature.
Leslie Rego is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, artist and Blaine County resident. To view more of Rego’s art, visit leslierego.com