Scariest Storm EVER.

Last night one I was confronted in the most terrifying way by one my of biggest fears. Anyone who knows me knows that I am scared to the core of thunder and lightning storms. When I was a child and a rare thunder storm occured, my parents would do the classic countdown (one-onethousand, two-onethousend....) but not to guesstimated the distance of the storm, but rather how long it would take me to run screaming for shelter in their room. To this day they still call and check up on me. The weather this spring/summer has particularly kooky here in Portland this year, and in the last 4 days we have had 2 HUGE thunder and lightning storms, not too common for us in the Pacific NW. I survived the one on Sunday pretty well, even with the emergency ticker on the bottom of the TV screen telling people to stay inside otherwise you WILL be stuck by lightning. I just turrned up the volume on the TV and pretended like people weren't being electrocuted by the dozens.
But last night was a different story. At exactly 2:45am last night my boyfriend and I were both woken up screaming and gasping (ok, maybe I was the screamer, but Mr W. was definately freaked as well) by the loudest, house-rocking clap of thumder I have EVER heard. The whole house literally shook and the cats totally freaked out as Mr Wonk jumped out of bed and went to go shut off all the fans and whatnot while I made sure I didn't soil the bedding. The rain started to pelt down so hard it sounded like hail. I could even hear the downstairs neighbors had be awakened as well and were sucrrying about. We stayed sitting up for a few minutes and waited for Aremegeddon, but the storm moved very swiftly away. We could hear the fading claps loudly in the distance. I was so jittery after that, I had a hard time sleeping again and had nightmares for the rest of the night. Most everyone in Portland and the surrounding areas have very similar stories. I think not one person got a good night sleep 'round these parts.