For the past few days, Toronto has been pelted with heavy rains for brief periods in fantastic thunderstorms. With the exception of ruining my hair, there is nothing I don't love about these wild orgasms of nature. Even when I drove an old Plymouth K-Car with no floor, I would chase these babies to the lake shore, and just live with the fact that the car would stall on the way home again.

Looks like we're going to have another one today. The wind has picked up, and I'm almost chilly sitting out on the balcony with my coffee and my dog. The sky is various shades of grey, and there is a smell of something electric on the wind.

To me, a thunderstorm can best be captured in the sound of Stevie Ray Vaughn's version of Little Wing. Once, I was lucky enough to be driving through a storm and it came on the radio. I cranked it up, pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the car, and stood in the downpour. I was drenched in warm summer rain, awesome guitar, and a heat that ran right through me.

And here it comes... the rain.

Despite my love of desert climes, I have always been a water baby. Always lived on a lake (Toronto or the Cottage) or river (Montreal), and the one time I was landlocked (Edmonton), I was miserable. At the Cottage as a child, my mother used to sit up with me, and we'd watch the fork lightening bounce off the lake outside our window. Then I would head upstairs to bed, and listen to the rain pound down on the roof.

When I grew older, and Dad & I had an apartment right on the river, I began to feel the storms with an intensity that wasn't in me at the age of four! There was just something so... hot about them.

Ten years ago, me, Tom, the hood of the New Yorker, side of a highway north of the city, heavy rain and thunder...

I will always love this weather, even when I'm too old to remember why.