Looking Up

I've been looking up at the sky through the trees a lot lately. And occasionally snapping a picture or two, like through these oaks. Looking at a tree in this way makes it into such a graphic image, so much of the detail is lost in the shadowy contrast between bright sky and shaded tree. Much easier to see the shape of the branches versus the leaves.
These pictures were taken on the strange day last month when it rained for about 10 minutes, along with thunder and lightning. It was just starting to cloud up when I took these pictures. It had been about 95F and very still.
A big breeze came up, it got cooler very suddenly, the sky got really dark all of a sudden. Then these huge raindrops fell, like three or four times the size of a normal raindrop. We ran around and enjoyed it as it was such a treat, and oh my goodness it smelled so heavenly.
You probably have to be a Californian from my area to realize how extraordinary this was. It almost never rains in the summer here, and if it does, it doesn't usually rain in them iddle of a super hot day. And we certainly don't get thunder and lightning, even during the rainy months it is very unusual. I just looked up the average precipitation and it is .2 inches for the month of June.
Unfortunately the lightning started a whole lot of fires, and there wasn't enough accompanying rain to put out those fires. Many of those fires are still going (like the huge one in Big Sur) and I hope the firefighters can get them out soon.