Of course, the weather is beyond our control – all that we can do is to try to work around it. We knew that bad weather was coming, but early on, it looked like it would hold off until 2:00. As we were setting up, though, the forecast and radar showed storms arriving near noon. We have a lightning detector which shows how far away the strikes are, which gives warning before we can even see the lightning – if we see lightning, we clear the field immediately.
So we launched as soon as we could, and kept a close eye on the approaching storm. I haven’t counted yet, but I think we launched about 24 times. We heard some thunder, and decided it was time to quit. Perhaps we should have quit a little earlier, because even though we were rapidly closing up our launch operation, it started raining before we had everything stowed in our vehicles. We got drenched! But it was a good day anyway.