Windfall

Interlude

As the storm nears its first brush with land, it’s almost unrecognizable from the soft, pale breeze born off the coast of Africa. It stretches hundreds of miles across, thickly armored in electric gray arcs of clouds. It carries inside of it the energy of the sun, stored in the form of tightly packed moisture that continues to rise and fall, condense and shred, and every transfer bleeds more fury into the system.

Dangerous, but not lethal. When it breaks, it will dump torrential rains and heavy winds, but it’s still just a storm.

But as it nears the first of several islands in its way, a one-in-a-billion confluence of events comes together, as an ocean current winding its way north to south is warmed by just the right angle of the sun. Its temperature rises by four degrees.

Just four.

Just at the right time.

The storm passes over the current, and bumps into the sudden warm wall of rising moisture. Something alchemical happens, deep within the clouds; a certain critical mass of moisture and temperature and energy, and the storm begins its relentless suicidal course.

The last small variable in the equation is a random brisk wind spinning off the Cape. It collides with the storm’s far perimeter and slides along, and because it is cooler it drags the storm with it.

The storm begins to turn. The storm has rotation. It has mass. It has a gigantic energy source, self-sustaining. It has taken a huge leap, grown explosively and deepened in its menace, and it is no longer a child.

It is now a full-fledged hurricane; and it is still growing.