Brace yourself for a contender for The Understatement of the Year Award™: Rockford's weather has been weird. The weather of the whole of the midwest has in fact—devastatingly so in some cases, so I don't mean to make too light. By weird I mean rainy, floody, shitty, stormy, but with very regular stretches of sunny, warm (but not too hot), breezy, and generally perfect. I guess the volume of rain is what's getting most noticed, but what really strikes is the schizophrenic nature of the weather. It almost seems to alternate every other day...or even alternate back and forth between rain and shine within the day...a few times.

So, as I sit on my couch on Sunday, pre-sun set, June 29, 2008, I hear the third (or fourth; who can bother to keep track?) little rain fall / minor T-storm. But I notice my lighting in my room looking all wrong. It was not the slate color of gloomy skies. And the shadows were sharp and long—like a sunset, not a 7000k, diffuse, shadow-free, overcast day. I snapped my head up and saw the coolest thing.

Through my small window, I saw the combination of a phantasmagorically beautiful sunset, and rain. Now, I've seen this rare combo a few times before.

But it still knocks you back. Awe inspiring if not at least very damn pretty.

I leapt up and grabbed my camera, put battery on, took polarizer off (though that may have been a mistake), fiddled with buttons and started recording off the back of my deck, able to see, but still mostly sheltered from the little drops.

Here is some run 'n' gun footage of this weird weather. It reminds me of the wobbly, haphazard footage that you see chronicling a tornado...and it definitely doesn't show off my camera skills. The White Balance is off for the first bit of the clip(but kind of cool—though literally the opposite); the focus is barely pulled; i kept adjusting the Iris to cope with truly bizarre lighting, and I pointed and shot like an ADD-plagued gibbon who doesn't know what a tripod is...but all the technical, pedantic stuff was way less important than getting a few moments of this ephemeral freak of nature.

I was right. The improbable rain and sun hybrid was short lived.

P.S.: As i feared might happen, in the smaller version, the rain looks like compression artifacts. So, if your compy can pull it off, watch the High Def version (click on the HD button on the video) and watch it full screen.