Saturday, April 08, 2006

STORMY WEATHER

Early, early this morning, the sirens awakened She Who Must Be Obeyed and me just before four o’clock.

We turned on the TV and were greeted by a frantic weatherman standing in front of a Radar-Map that showed horrific swaths of orange and deep red headed our way. Outside, the night was eerily calm, that quiet before the storm, but a look toward the northern sky told the true story.

The sky was boiling with looming clouds that were lit from within by an almost continuous flickering of lightning. I stood transfixed at the window, watching the spectacle, a spectacle that was strangely silent.

Then the sirens sounded once again, and SWMBO and I took refuge in the basement, flashlight at the ready in case the power died. When the storm struck, it was as though a switch were turned on. Violent gusts slapped at the house, blasting rain at the windows. The trees swayed and bent. It was a scene right out of King Lear...

I expected to hear the tell-tale clatter of hailstones any moment, but no hail came. And this was good, because the last thing I need is to have to deal with repairing a hail-damaged roof.

After a few minutes, things calmed down and we returned to bed.

Today we found out that we had dodged a bullet. Two tornadoes had touched down, slicing their way across the county and lifting off just a few miles west of us. In our neighborhood, tree limbs were smashed to flinders in several places. And less than a mile from our house, along a busy thoroughfare, there was a single, isolated piece of storm damage: a metal sign that had been twisted and mangled as if by a giant’s hand, leaving the surrounding buildings completely untouched.

It’s that capricious, completely unpredictable nature of tornadoes that makes them so frightening - and fascinating at the same time. I’ve dreamed of them many times, invariably in the form of frightening dreams of black, worm-filled skies, dreams that leave me with a peculiar fearful exhilaration. It’s the exhilaration that comes of facing the whirlwind - coming face-to-face with God’s awesome power - and surviving.

As we survived last night.

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