A July thundershower

July 20.

A very hot day, a bathing day. Warm days about this. Corn in blossom these days.

P. M. — To Hubbard Bath. A muttering thunder-cloud in northwest gradually rising and with its advanced guard hiding in the sun and now and then darting forked lightning. The wind rising ominously also drives me home again.

At length down it comes upon the thirsty herbage, beating down the leaves with grateful, tender violence and slightly cooling the air. How soon it sweeps over and we see the flash in the southeast!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1854

See July 20, 1851 (“A thunder-shower in the night ... the lightning filled the damp air with light, like some vast glow-worm in the fields of ether opening its wings.”)