We saw a tempest, not The Tempest

Last week, several friends and I came up with the lovely idea of going to Shakespeare in the Park after work. We decided to meet right after work and have a pot-luck picnic before the show. I made pasta salad. We left work, and the sky got a little darker. We got to the park, and the sky got a little darker. We took out our picnic, and the sky got real dark, and started growling. We ran to the nearest gazebo (don't think round, arch-roofed romantic 'you-are-sixteen-going-on-seventeen' structure, think barn roof on stilts with lines of picnic tables beneath), and the sky opened up and...well, 'rained down hell' is only slightly melodramatic. Winds raged, rain came in sideways, lightening crashed like mad. We screamed a bit, laughed a lot, and once the winds calmed enough to let the rain come down more vertical-like, we shrugged our shoulders and unpacked our now slightly damp, but just as tasty, picnic, and finished our adventure...and dinner. By the time we were done eating, the storm was finished and the sky was orange and calm(ish), and we all went home- damp, kinda cold, and with a good story (bad decisions often lead to those).