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We had a really nice July 4, first at a pool party, though I dozed off with the dogs for a little while during the sixth hour of conversation about cycling, and then watching the Cocoa fireworks down by the river. Before and after the big boomers, which of course terrified the little dog, our niece and nephew and our friends and their boy went nuts with sparklers. Ah, the simple joy of flying sparks. Only these days, all the kids were attempting to cast spells out of the “Harry Potter” books as they thrust their sparklers at unseen enemies. Fortunately, I was not turned into a were-rabbit, or whatever people get turned into by Harry Potter spells.

As I was on the way to the memorial service yesterday, a mass of rain and storms was rolling into the Space Coast. I stopped for just a moment to get this photo of a toothy shelf cloud moving over the barrier islands. At points it looked as if there were fingers draping over the landscape as I got closer to it and then was lashed by the rain. Florida is king of the shelf clouds.

We’ve had much-needed rain this week in the form of daylong gully-washers. The National Weather Service in Melbourne recorded 2.48 inches of rain June 29, a record. The next day, it noted 1.29 inches. June had 5.9 inches, compared with 16.91 for the year overall – more than a third of the year’s rainfall, much of it in two days!