Storm in the city

So we finally got weather here other than all day sunny or all day dreary.   It does thunderstorm here.

I've never liked storms.  They're loud and they're alarming and they can be really dangerous.  But I've experienced storms in the city before -- once a nasty one in downtown Pittsburgh that put on an amazing light show -- and I like them there.   The Pittsburgh storm was in a hotel, so you couldn't hear much, but here I've found out that the thunder has a much different tone to it.  It's got sharp edges, sounds like a load of metal falling down the stairs, not the rounded, rolling sound you get in the Midwest.

I had a doctor's appointment right at the end of the day today.  A large number of Harvard doctors are located in Harvard Square, in the large administrative building there.  The lower floor is given over to shops and has an inside arcade area.

Anyway, I came down from the appointment to an arcade packed with people and this:

If it's not immediately obvious what's going on there, that isn't water pouring down, it's water blasting up.  And no, I've no idea what's normally there or why it was doing that.  I assume there's a drain that couldn't handle the water.

This is all about three steps away from the subway, so I figured I'd take advantage of the fact that no one seemed inclined to go out and hopefully catch a train easily. 

Turns out that when it rains in the city, everyone packs into the subway -- outside the tolls, of course.   There's a weird sort of feeling -- Hawkeye describes war in an episode of M*A*S*H with "A war is like when it rains in New York and everybody crowds into doorways, ya know? And they all get chummy together. Perfect strangers. The only difference, of course, is in a war it's also raining on the other side of the street, and the people who are chummy over there are trying to kill the people who are over here who are chums."  It's interesting that I've got a better idea of what he means now  (sans trying to kill each other, obviously -- I was in a rainy city, not a war).  People stand watching the rain and chatting.   Some people fret over getting where they're going, but mostly they just all hang out.

I got on the subway and outran the storm, going under it up to Porter Square.  By the time I got there the storm was well out of that area and I was able to walk back to the apartment.   Things smelled surprisingly nice and there was a cold bite to the air.  I've noticed that when there were storms in the general area here -- the wind can get quite cold.