Sunday, August 9th, all day the heat has been building, turning the great outdoors into a Turkish steambath. I did some work in the morning but by the afternoon I have changed into a lethargic sponge, sweating after just two steps.
My wife loves the heat, energised by it; I hate it for sucking all vitality from me. It feels like breathing liquid humidity to be swallowed rather than inhaled. I hide in the relative coolness of the house, watching the windows fog up. The dog too is lying low, panting like a labouring steam engine. Only the actors on TV seem unaware of the overcharge of energy collecting under the lead dead sky.
"Shit!" My youngest exclaims, surfacing briefly from his videogame. "Look at the green sky."
"Gree..en?!" I bounce up from the couch and rush to the nearest window. Ever since 1985, in our house, green sky has been a code word for tornado. The sky is a sickly green pall, oppressively heavy and still. Just waiting.
"Tornado? Hell, no." But I run to the west window, peering toward the weather edge. Everything is calm; the leaves are barely shivering in the dead air. There is no sun, just a pale green glow.
I make quick rounds, upstairs, downstairs, checking in all directions. Calm, dead calm, exuding malevolence. I guard the line to the north-west, where the weather is expected to come from.
Then as I watch, the compression wave of the first wind gust blasts through the foliage. The leaves explode into motion and all the trees are rocking crazily, limbs twisting beyond endurance, branches snapping and whipped off to the east. I hear the hundred year old maple groan at the onslaught. The rain is pelting down in explosive drops, soon becomes horizontal, quickly washing out the distance.
From the mudroom door, my 31 year-old son, who was seared by the memory of 85, is watching anxiously to the west. "Is that hail?"
"No, no. Just water," my wife seeks to reassure him. The rain is coming in one door, leaving by the other. A new wave of gusts collide with the house, rebound from the brick walls, come bursting through the door like through a wind tunnel. With a machine gun rhythm, rain drops explode on the window panes.
Across the view a line of poplars are gyrating frantically, bending one way one second, then recoiling with a vengeance. 'They are not supposed to do that,' I repeat to myself as I watch one curve into a bow. These are nearly two feet across, for Christ's sake!
Hunting underfoot, the dog whines for the shelter of the house. I let him in and take a quick turn around, checking if we still have the screen door. The view out the windows is of trees dancing against a backdrop of murky gray. The question is, what is hiding behind it? Should we head for the basement? The lights in the house flicker, but stay on. Thank God, for as long as we have power, no tornado has cut the grid. It is the one reliable warning sign.
Jagged lightning strikes to the west, to the south, to the north. Continuous thunder rumbles overhead, with the occasional whipping backlash of a close strike. You feel the sound in your gut as it shakes the air. We are surrounded, in the epicentre of the storm. Still we hover near the doorway, feeding on the excitement.
"Fuck! Look at that. That tree is coming down! Right across the hydro lines. Jeez! See those sparks." Sure enough, the lights go off. A poplar, 20 inches in diameter, has given up the fight. The windbreak we had planted 22 years ago broke in the wind.
I started worrying about candles: we'll need them tonight.
"There goes another one. Going, going, gone!"
"Right across the silo," my oldest confirms. "Leaning on the barn."
"Let me see," my wife insists.
"Where? Where?" My wife and I try to squeeze past the boys to get a better look. I get a blast of wind in my face and the rain instantly obscures my glasses. I swear, pull back and try to find a dry corner of my T-shirt to clean them off. We are besieged. Trees are falling, the wind is blasting, lightning may strike us any moment and there is a tornado is lurking out there, hiding in the storm. We still have a roof but the basement is probably flooded. All that water has to go somewhere. The metal roof is drumming with ferocity. A branch sails by and gets tangled in the crab apple tree. Our lives are in danger and all I can think of is that it will cost us a bucketful to get all this fixed.
The violence doesn't last long. The storm cell moves on, leaving us in a light following wind. Everything is calm again. But there are trees down, branches and leaves all over the grass.
"That had to be a micro burst," my oldest inform us.
"Whew, that was close." The excitement is slow to fade, released by worry about the consequences.
Inventorying the damage. Two 20 inch poplars are leaning on the barn at about a 40 degree angle. A large poplar is across the hydro, the lines are on the ground. The cottage feed has also been ripped. Walking up on the access road, we find two more trees across the way, cutting us off from the world. I swear, the hydro trunk won't be able to get to us. I call them anyway. I am told that the region is experiencing an unusually high demand and 7,500 people are without power. Please be patient, the recording advises in a neutral tone. Not a drop of sympathy in the mechanical voice.
Darkness comes and we huddle around candle flame, wondering how our neighbours are doing.
