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5 April 2011

"Stoop and let it pass, the storm shall have its way"


An image very much like the ones we used to see
I’ve always been a fan of the wind and the rain – provided I am inside.  Actually, that isn’t strictly true.  There are times when yes, I feel blissful, snuggling up in my enormous white marshmallow duvet whilst listening to the angry hammering of the rain only metres away, but more often than not, I find myself frowning, critical and just a little bit unimpressed by the one thing we believe England does so well.  The thing is, there’s rain and there’s rain, and then there’s more rain.  It’s not like we lack variety here in the UK; it can be drizzling, spitting, pouring, horizontal, vertical, fat, heavy and light – often all at the same time.  But there are some places in the world that just do rain better.

Take America for example and Alabama more specifically.  It is considered to be a ‘humid subtropical’ state, situated if I remember rightly, in the strip known as ‘Tornado Alley’ or ‘Dixie Alley’.  For a very long time Alabama and Kansas ranked highest for the number of EF5 tornados, which are the most powerful of their kind.  When a storm brewed in Alabama, you brewed with it as the humidity sucked all the moisture and motion from the air like an almighty gob, and held it in a drawn out state of tension.  Bill or Jake or whoever’s shift it was on the weather channel would gesture towards the advancing storm as though the large red quivering mass lurking over the state needed any introduction or clarification.  When you knew a storm was approaching and when you realised it was a tornado not simply a downpour, you made to get inside, or you found a cellar. Pronto.

The first tornado I experienced was during the night.  Aged around 11 and 10, my sister and I had gone for a sleepover at another British family’s house; the adults – post dinner party – were seeing the muggy evening through with iced drinks and the patio doors that lay limply open offered no enticing air as a form of relief.  We slept restlessly as was so often the case in mid summer and the first thing us children knew about the approaching storm was a wake up call where we were told to bring out pillows out into the corridor.  There was a siren that could be heard all around town and the Dads were kneeling in front of the cupboards, removing stacks of board games and putting them to one side so that we could sit in the covered space and be away from all windows and glass.  In the background the weather channel was streaming a message about tornado warnings that seemed to be on a loop and Montgomery was entirely shadowed by a red cloud.  All efforts were being made to remove any anxiety from the situation and we sat playing Monopoly and sipping on overly sweet Minute Maid lemonade.  

I don’t claim to have been untroubled by the whole experience; in fact, I remember bursting into tears when I realized what was happening.  The Dads – crazy Englishmen that they were, spent much of the night standing just outside the back door, whisky in hand and surveying the landscape for whatever beast could be coming.  But we were lucky that the tornado decided upon another path and narrowly missed our road by a mile, taking roofs of several churches and homes and pulling over trees as it tore past.  

The next tornado that I remember was after a pool party at our Canadian friends’ house.  We had been miffed when ordered out of the pool mid way through a game of Categories and so we trudged into the house, carelessly and deliberately dripping plenty of water onto the carpets en route to get changed.  On this occasion we were forced to see the night through, held captives by the storm that raged outside.  Rain plummeted to the ground, ricocheting off the tarmac like jumping jacks and forming a river of surface water that gushed into the storm drains.  The siren wailed reliably and my Dad and sister parked themselves on the garage floor, watching how the sky melted into an eerie green that would suddenly rip into fragments as the lightening forked all across the sky.  As the younger sibling and also a girl (the Canadians were all boys so were clearly a lot braver than I was), it took me a little while to pluck up courage to go and watch the storm that was quite simply magnificent in its ferocity.  I’d spent much of the evening lying on the sofa with a duvet over my head, absolutely petrified by the deafening crashes of thunder. 

The following morning, when the sirens had ceased, and the air had cooled, we drove home; the sun, already risen hours earlier cast its revealing light on the evidence of the night before.  Lightening had struck and re-struck the same poor telegraph pole opposite the house and it was now suspended only by the wires which ironically it was meant to support.  Everything looked and felt damp and there was a refreshing coolness that brushed through the air.  Best of all there was that incredible, deep scent of wet tarmac that so often is the very redeeming feature of rain. 

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