Mother of Storms

It was the flash of lightning that made me realize how quickly the afternoon had darkened. I switched on the light just as the delayed rumble of thunder caused the floor to vibrate.

Focused on the story I was writing, I was oblivious to the rain until a gusting wind drove the raindrops against the window like so many marbles being tossed against the glass.

Another flash of lightning with thunder cracking at almost the same time was finally enough for me to turn away from my computer and look through the rain streaked glass.  Overhead clouds swirled at multiple layers - with only a little imagination, I found myself looking up rather than down into a monstrous whirlpool.

A four pronged fork of lightning stabbed into the ground, leaving me momentarily blinded and unprepared for the next onslaught of wind driven rain. I recoiled from the window as though the glass might shatter into a thousand shards.

The wind rose to banshee pitch and with it the rain changed direction once, twice, and a third time in nearly as many minutes.

It was the mother of all storms - a tumult that ran uninterrupted for twelve hours, ending at four in the morning with a deluge of hail that I was sure would finally result in the shattered glass I had half anticipated when the weather was first working itself into a frenzy.