After editing photos for most of the morning, I decided to head out and do a little geocaching. My first find was a puzzle cache in the Experimental Farm that I had solved a while ago but hadn’t gotten around to finding. While there, I heard rumblings of thunder in the clouds to the north and the rain started just as I made it back to the car.

I headed south to see if my friend Sarah was open for kayaking, but she wasn’t so I continued on to do some more geocaches. Making my way to Albion and Rideau Roads, I stopped at the United Church on the corner and found a couple of caches in the vicinity. More thunder and lightning to the north.

Hmm.

Travelling east along Rideau Road and then Thunder Road (an omen?), I stopped at Norm Childs Park to find my fourth cache of the day. I parked and followed the path through the trees while listening to the thunder in the distance. I passed by the cache to the end of the trail where I took some pictures and shot some video of the clouds, which I posted to Twitter.

Right after I took this there was a flash and loud crackle. #onstorm #weathet #ottawa pic.twitter.com/NWTUdxgFBv

— Gordon Dewis 🇨🇦🌻☁️🔭☃️😷💉💉💉💉💉💉💉 (@KeeperOfMaps) August 28, 2016

You can see my little excursion to look at the weather on the map.

After posting it to Twitter, I headed to the cache. Just as I found it, there was a flash followed almost immediately by a crackle of thunder. Quickly signing the log, I beat a hasty retreat to the car. Just as I closed the door, the rain started, so I took a couple more pictures and then headed out. I had thought I looking for another cache but I decided to chase the storm for a bit and share some photos with people.

I took this on Farmer’s Way, just a couple of minutes after leaving Norm Childs Park:

Check out how much water is on the road after just a couple of minutes and how big the raindrops are!

Some people on Twitter started responding to my weather tweets, including The Weather Network who asked if they could use my footage. I said yes, but I don’t know if they’ve actually used it.

I continued to follow the storm, stopping to take photos every now and then, which I tweeted. I caught up with the storm a couple of times and saw lots of wet roads before calling it a day somewhere near Green Valley.

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On the way back to Ottawa, I stopped before getting onto the 417 and took this:

You can see the route I followed along the country roads before returning via a more direct route:

All in all a fun day with an unexpected adventure! 🙂