Wednesday afternoon, a light thundershower followed Tuesday's rumblers; behind it, a very cool Thursday.

Today, warmer temperatures and another round of rain and lightning above an ever-greener world. We've met spring.

The Centurion Crabapples are in bloom.

As are the Queens of the Night.

And daughter of House Tulip, Princess Margaret Rose.

Yesterday's high temperatures brought the first muscular thunderstorms of the season. A crush of cells made for an intense electrical storm thirty miles south of Greater Cleveland.

Like all storms, that one too passed.

Northeast Ohio's stubborn cold weather has ended and spring is finally, vigorously, establishing itself. On Saturday morning I noticed that the trees had made more progress in the last two days than the last two weeks. Knowing the bloom will be quick, now — it's eighty degrees at the moment, towering cumulus clouds rolling by — I caught my favorite balcony sight in a sequence, snapping photographs on Sunday, Monday and today.

Not sparse but not full; and not quite green, though we'll have summer soon enough.

This year's spring was briefly, if pleasurably, unseasonable in warmth before stopping short and stepping back, caught — as one year ago — in winter's stubborn pinch. After nature's weekend practical joke, we Greater Clevelanders took yesterday's bitter winds and moments of icy rain and sleet with something of a charitable consent. While cooking dinner, however, I glanced out my window and realized that this was no winter gale — it was a strange, cold summer storm. February's precipitation came down from June's cloud banks.

An hour later, a rainbow appeared for a minute or two before it was enveloped by a wide, white sheath of humor gliding along like a tornadic column.

And east it went.

I don't know what sun, star, cloud and sky said to one another this morning but it was quite a conversation.

Yes, I concede: it's beautiful. It's also either one month late or six months early. Sunshine and seventy, please.

Sunrise as gratuity. Thunderstorms have been forecast — though given the youth of the season, "alleged" is more fitting. A line is quickly approaching, some cloudtops rising above 35,000 feet. Earnest cumulonimbus may arrive this afternoon; if the sky doesn't consolidate into a featureless grey, plumes should be visible. My camera remains at my side.

FEATURELESS GREY: And we've some snow in store for us. Can't win them all.

Sunday's sky was beautiful. Today, Monday, was gorgeous and warm. Tomorrow's temperatures should climb into the low eighties.

All of this teases green out of trees, so in a short time I'll happily crane my camera down forty-five degrees or so.

I snapped this photograph as I exited my car this morning. I'm not one to lament mankind's industrial progress at the geographical expense of natural habitats but I question whether this pair was meant to seek wetlands on the tops of office buildings or among select strips of grass. Might these be "suburban geese"?

On Friday, I managed to catch the vanguard of the front garden at my folks' house unfurl. Three mild days later, the daffodils and hyacinths came into a fuller bloom.

A little over two decades ago, my sister came home from preschool with a grape hyacinth. It flourished.

Three years after the grape was planted, I came home from preschool with a pink hyacinth. It flourished.

My father purchased the white hyacinth for a mock red, white and blue. He'll see to a third flourishing.

I was assured from inside to have worked under the most expert supervision.

A new week, a new day.

Those contrails are so relentless, there's often as much man as God in the sky. But the jetliner script never seems to take hold as well.