I Am the Storm

         I am the storm. I started out as a small whirling wind. I tossed maple leaves. I played in the tall grasses, bending stocks in wide rushing waves. I bent the small tree limbs, and then whipped them. Tin rooves rattled. Sign posts trembled.
         Oklahoma was my birth place, and I was born on the ground, over the prairie, and through the trees. The sky captured me. I was drawn higher and higher into the upper reaches until I could touch nothing. I had stalled and so I waited, rising on warm air currents, higher and higher. Light clouds parted as I rose into the upper atmosphere where an ocean of hot air underneath me bouyed me up, and then I was hit. A heavy mass of cold air fell on me, pushing me and squeezing me between hot cumulous columbs. I tore apart and began to move in great circles. The cold air heavy on top of me was suffocating and full of water. I tore at it with everything I could until the clouds and the water was whirling and churning all about me. Far below the ground grew dark as I blotted out the sun. Then I forgot my birthplace, and my former breathless nature. I was real; I was alive; and I was made for this.
         I spent my time in the early morning, gathering in intensity and then I began to fall. Far below me to the south a man was asleep in the back of his truck. He had been travelling on the I 5 when he suddenly decided he was tired. Several hours later he awoke to a dark and angry sky. A man on the radio signaled a severe and sudden storm warning. Who needs sleep anyway?
         Heavy, water logged air forced me down on top of the trees. I could see a man heading for the top of a hill. He set up instruments to measure my intensity. Whatever was coming, he would get nailed first. I waited about 30 to 45 minutes carressing the earth and then I sent rain. It fell slowly at first, with great fat raindrops. Then it began to fall in sheets. I laughed and the wind and rain increased.
         I boiled over the trees. Cars slowed on the road as my winds tore at them, rocking them from side to side. The highway all but disappeared as rain pounded from the road. Great thunderclaps split the sky. I was power. Inside I was vibrating, throbbing, singing through the hills, over the wild places, and through suburbs and towns. Winds were 75 MPH when I let loose with hail. I pounded on the earth. Static climbed and electricity flashed through my veins. On top of a hill a tower was struck.. The Emergency Operations manager lost his radio and the man on top of the other hill was having trouble with his instruments. A man inside his car waited patiently with a worried look on his face, and then I was done. In a few minutes, light rains pushed a gentle breeze.
         On top of the hill the man got his radio up and working and radioed the fire department. People in town grabbed for their rain gear and headed out to the streets. The first pole had gone down on Main Street, but a domino effect had reached three miles to the Arbuckle Mountains. Several houses were in a sorry state. A massive tree had fallen and taken out the south side of a roof. Emergency crews blocked the roads to keep the people away from broken tree limbs and fallen power lines. I played my lightning across the sky in the far distance, my power spent.
         I am the storm, an act of God. All in all, a good thing.