Songfacts®:

• Keith wrote this song with his frequent collaborator, Nashville singer-songwriter Bobby Pinson. He told the story of this song on his website: "I usually write songs from the core out, but this one started at the front. Bobby and I put together such a great first verse. Those lines are exactly what we did at the lake. You can't write that memory down better than that. It's 114 degrees in July, that lake is muddy and right out on the edge of town. It's where everybody goes. We'd call it 'Dirty Bird' instead of Thunderbird. You'd build a fire at night and the high school kids would be out there drinking beer. We had that first verse done and were like, well, where are we going to go with it? A girl would have a more difficult time getting out there because her dad would be more strict than on a son, and we built the story from there. Bad weather is coming – tornado sirens are a weekly event out there. So the storm is coming and they're out there kissing in the rain while her parents are wondering where she is. Then we took it 25 years forward."