Windfall

Interlude

A storm is never just one thing. Too much sun on the water by itself can’t cause a storm. Storms are equations, and the math of wind and water and luck has to be just right for it to grow.

This storm, young and fragile, runs the risk of being killed by a capricious shift in winds coming off the pole, or a high-pressure front pushing through from east to west. Like all babies, this storm’s nothing but potential and soft underbelly, and it will take almost nothing to rip it apart. Even as attuned as I am, I don’t really notice. It’s nothing, yet.

But the weather keeps cooking up rising temperatures and the winds stay stable, and the clouds grow thick and heavy. The constant friction of drops churning in the clouds creates energy, and energy creates heat. The storm gets fed from above, by the sun, and from below, by blood-warm water, and a generator starts turning over somewhere in the middle, hidden in the mist. With the right conditions, a storm system can sustain itself for days, living off its own combustion, an engine of friction and mass.

It’s just a few days old, at this point. It won’t live more than a few weeks, but it can either go out with a whimper, or with a bang.

This one can go either way.

It moves in a wide, slow sweep over the water. A wall of white cloud, drifting gray veils. No rain makes it to the ocean below; the engine sucks it back up, recycling and growing.

As the moisture condenses inside the clouds, conditions get strange. Intense energy sends water into jittering frenzies, producing even more power. The clouds darken as they grow denser. As they crawl across open water they are getting fatter, spreading, spawning, and that engine at the heart of the storm stores up power for leaner times.

And still, it’s really nothing. A summer squall. An annoyance.

But now it’s starting to know that it’s alive.