I suppose it's safe to say that some of you have no idea what a real storm is like, here in Darwin we get hummdingers, called cyclones, they're bloody beaut, excuse my french.
The clouds come rolling over the horizon like the Himalayas come to visit, high and dark and powerful, the lightning seething across and around them. The air is so charged it makes your hair stand on end, and the dogs hide and the birds go to ground, the world is silent but for the distant war-drums of the storm. Then comes the wind, a zephyr here and there at first, then suddenly the atmosphere is roiling across the city like the hounds of hell are coming behind, and the great black mountains above swallow the sky. The rain follows on, screaming in, nearly horizontal, lashing and whipping at you, seeming to tear the flesh from your bones. And still the gale builds, roaring defiance to the gods, tearing the world around you, ripping the puny works of man like so many toys, piling them up only to toss them on again, into the sky and away. And then, silence, stillness, the eye.
But it is a brief respite, a jest, the storm has paused as if to admire it's Art. Then, bellowing like a hundred trains, it's upon you again, fiercer, angrier, you’re still alive and it hates you for that.
The palms bend and bow to their raging Master, tearing away their fronds in a display of abject humiliation, snapping and falling as He rejects their prayers. The ocean is a seething mob, an audience to the violence above, a lurking monster awaiting it's turn, waiting for a piece of Man. But the hours pass, the angry god departs and all is quiet, till next he comes, leaving behind the devastation that is his mark, and his footprint on your soul.