Scary, weird morning

[albatross]

Just thought I would share this quick story because it's been a weird day already.

I live in Northwest PA and we went out early to play this morning because it was supposed to be 50 by 6:30am.

We get to the course and there's a frost delay. No big deal. A chance to wake up a little and finish my coffee.

Let me add something else. We got up early after staying up too late and consuming a large number of beverages.

So we're feeling a little hung over and just waiting to get the ok to hit the first tee. We wait about 45 minutes and then we are ready to roll. Beautiful morning. I par two of the first three holes and I'm off to a pretty good start.

We get done putting out on 3 and all of a sudden these nasty clouds have rolled in. There was nothing in the forecast about this. My friend is about to tee off on 4 when the biggest bolt of lighting you've ever seen lights up the sky and scares the living out of us.

So now we have to walk from the fourth tee back to the car which is a LONG way at our course. Very scary walk. No rain shack on the way either. It felt like it took us 2 hours to walk to the car. It's storming like a Mo-Fo and all we can do is keep walking fast and hope for the best. There isn't a more hopeless feeling in the world than walking across a wide open golf course in a thunderstorm, carrying 14 metal rods.

We get back to the car and we're soaking wet and a little shook up because this was thunder and lightning about as bad as I've ever seen

Throw our stuff in the trunk, hop in the car my friend turns the key and nothing. Dead battery I told him to start the car while we were sitting for 45 minutes during the frost delay listening to the radio but he said "Nah, it'll be fine. 45 minutes isn't going to kill the battery."

Now we're sitting in his car, soaking wet and we can't go anywhere. Not another soul around for us to get a jump start. Finally someone showed up and we got out of there.

One hell of a start to the day. In all, we were at the course for over 3 hours and played 3 holes Sometimes it amazes me the stuff I'll go through for golf.

[PiKapp23]

Related, but not exactly...

A few years ago I was playing a round with a friend when it started to rain while we were on the #10 green. It had been sprinkling on and off for most of the day so we just thought it would go away in a few minutes so we pulled up to the #11 tee and parked under a big old tree to help stay dry (it was raining really really hard now). After sitting there about 5-6 minutes we saw a flash and huge a very loud crack on lightening in the trees just beside us - apparently lightening had just hit one of the trees just a few feet from us. It scared us but it was about another 30 seconds before we both truly realized how close it had been when we could feel the heat from the strike and smell the burn. We were pretty confused about what to do since lightening was flashing all over the place around us and the only way to get back to the clubhouse was to drive back across a wide open field for a few hundred yards (#10 is a long par 5). We ended up staying there figuring 'lightening only strikes the same place once' and about 20 minutes later it cleared up and we finished our round.

[putput]

Wow, it just sound to me that nature didn’t feel like you golfing on her today my friend... better luck next time

[iacas]

Yeah, I had that same thunderstorm go through too. Bizarre. I thought it might cancel my lesson and, like you said, there was nothing in the forecast about it. Even while it was pouring down rain the forecast was updated to say "50% chance" of rain.

And the rest of the day has been full of 40 MPH winds. Fun.

[Clambake]

I think you should have kept playing, as the heavy stuff probably wasn't going to start coming down for awhile. Think of the Bishop in Caddyshack!