Sturm Und Drang
(all photos are not by me, but are, rather, taken from these four flickr sites - (1) (2) (3) (4) -
you can see many more such photos at these sites)
“Oh, and by the way,” Sarah had told me, “Jane said you can only stay with them in
Last night, I was sitting on my bed, slowly absorbing a dry and drawn-out essay on self-education and evaluation in humanitarian aid organisations during situations of crisis, when, all around, the rumbling started. Not at all like the usual punctuated claps of thunder, the approaching storm sounded like a great stampede of wildebeests, like the catastrophic build-up of angry electricity, like the centre of a oval-sized swarm of bees. There were bursts of lightning, slashing across the city centre, and there was the growl of wind coming from all directions. But for a while there was no rain. For a while there was only the terrible noises, an approaching war.
But then it came, the rain. And with it came the hailstones, pounding the trees and the soil and the windows; rocks the size of icecubes. I opened the door a little - ice flecked in through the crack and scattered onto the carpet. It was ferocious - I closed the door again and a burst of excitement shuddered through my body as I jumped onto the bed and snuck under the covers.
It continued. The drains were blocked by hail, and the yard flooded. I went to the door again, turned on the light outside, trying to assess the carnage from the safety of my flat. Where my feet had touched the carpet, wet patches appeared. From under my door, rain had been pouring in, the rubber-bottomed carpet was floating. My room was flooded.
I lifted up the VCR, books and clothes which were on the floor and put them on my bed. I slammed towels and the bath mat up against the door to stop more seeping in. I rang Ed, who ran down and got in through the shed, into the flat. The main house was leaking everywhere, he said, rain was pouring through the roof. We ran outside. Ted was up on the roof, clearing hailstones out of gutters - Jane grabbed a mop to help make the water flow efficiently into the storm drains, Ed and I threw rags and tarps at the base of the door to try and clog up the openning. We ripped drainpipes off the walls to make it flow faster, we clambered up to try and divert the flow of water to other areas of the roof, we dashed through troughs of water in the garden up to our ankles. All the while, hail stones pounded us from every direction.
Then it stopped. The wind slowly died down. Everywhere there was the sound of sirens - police sirens, ambulance sirens, house and car alarms, wailing like this was some other type of air raid. Everywhere the ground was a pot pouri of white and green - huge drifts of ice banked right up to the house, flecked throughout with torn leaves and broken branches. A thin mist snuck across the suburbs.
I pulled up the carpet, and in my soaked socks I started mopping the concrete floor underneath.
Today, the university is closed, due to water damage. Classes are cancelled, shops are shut. People in the streets are shovelling the huge carpets of ice that coat the paths and gardens, creating mini mountains of hailstones. The city centre's streets are covered with ripped leaves and drifts of ice. I have never experienced anything remotely like this.
And they say it might happen again this evening.
(Special note to those in the northern hemisphere - I would like to remind you that: (1) this is summer, and (2) this is Australia. Yeah, holy shit.)
