Nature’s Fireworks over Beijing at Night
We returned to Paradise, from our journey by rail through Russia, Mongolia and China, just in time for some lively showers and evening thunderstorms. It felt a bit like a “Welcome home!” after our travels, and a reminder of how much I have loved the excitement of lightning.
Many times over the years, I have noted that my love of thunderstorms and lightning probably led to my meteorology studies. Somewhere in there is my long-term fascination with the connection between human comfort and behavior, and lightning—nature’s “Alka-Seltzer of the air.” Near the end of our trip, I was loudly reminded of all that.
Our second night in Beijing, we watched a wave of thunderstorms light up the sky, and the huge city beneath it. Lightning filled the sky to the west of our little Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel. Minute by minute, dancing between the negative and positive charges of ground and cloud, the lightning drew closer and closer. It finally swept over and around us a bit after 11:00, neutralizing the electrical ion imbalances of a muggy, heavy evening. Literal sheets of rain washed pollutants from the air and scrubbed the streets and alleys of our historic Dongcheng District, northeast of Beijing’s center. We caught our breath as the excitement moved to the east.
The last time I saw a fireworks show like that was just a couple months over four decades ago, in Lawrence, Kansas.
As a grad student, the first meteorology class I taught at the University of Kansas was full of young people who saw no sense in studying weather. They argued that, since they drove air‑conditioned cars and lived and studied in climate‑controlled rooms, there was no need. They were totally insulated from Nature.
But this was lightning country, and in those nighttime storms, lightning would dash and sizzle and hang from cloud top to cloud top. I might lay in bed watching it for an hour or more. I loved it.
I explained to my modern, climate-controlled youngsters that the discomfort they felt with “dry” or “moist” air often had to do with electrical ions. In very dry air, especially with a warm wind, an excess of negative ions may build up, commonly causing irritability and short tempers. Water vapor molecules, on the other hand, may carry an excess of positive ions. Especially in warm air, high levels of water vapor—humidity—might make them fussy and uncomfortable, with a “leave me alone” attitude.
As luck would have it, that spring we had a week of very warm, windy, dry weather. Students squabbled over almost anything in our study rooms (“Do you HAVE to turn those *!^# pages so loud?”). It was great. Then, the night before an early‑morning lab with my “insulated” ones, a line of thunderstorms moved through. It was, perhaps, the best storm line ever; two and a half hours of fireworks. As it approached, drawing warm moist air in ahead of it, positive ions built up in our house. None of us could sleep. One by one, the kids drowsily wandered into our room. “What’s Wrong?” I’d ask. “I don’t feel good,” they’d say. “Well, what’s wrong, honey?” “NUTHIN’! I just don’t feel good… I can’t sleep.” As they huddled around the bed, each groaning in his or her own world, I turned my attention back to the show in the sky.
When the storm finally passed over us, at least a dozen lightning bolts crashed and exploded within a hundred yards of our house. As it moved off to the east, having sorted out all of those imbalanced ions, my tribe was asleep. Michelle conked out on the carpet near her mom, Nicole on the floor by her bed and Tim was sprawled across his bed with one foot on the floor.
My students were all yawning the next morning. “Just couldn’t sleep ‘til after the storm,” they said. “Not insulated enough, maybe,” I ventured.
Those Beijing fireworks were the perfect way to wrap up our amazing weeks abroad. At some level, it probably cleared our heads to weigh what we learned about the people, cultures, history and landscapes of the countries we traveled. And it is good to be back in Paradise.
[Copyright James L. Huckabay, 2013]
