"I hear hurricanes a-blowin'.
I know the end is comin' soon.
I fear rivers overflowin'.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin."
So, last evening the sky suddenly—very suddenly—went black. My well-lit office suddenly plunged into darkness. I turned my head to look out the window and leaped into action, rushing to my bedroom, going out onto the balcony and pulling in the clothes that were hanging there....
Let's fade out to a time about two months ago. As before the world suddenly turned black, but I had no idea what was coming. Curiously I looked out the window at a world plunged into twilight grey. I watched as a lake whose surface is usually glass suddenly started to froth. I watched as a sign atop a nearby hotel suddenly lost one of its characters, the "letter" floating away like a leaf caught in a zephyr. Only the leaf, in this case, was a sizable chunk of metal.
I continued watching, still not quite fathoming what I was seeing as a large strip of stainless steel siding was stripped from a building's roof. As trees ever-closer to my apartment started sway and, in some cases, actually bend in the wind. Then it struck the building, just as I was getting out of my chair to investigate further. The wind blasting through my wide-open window (three metres away) nearly pushed me back into the chair.
Needless to say this started a big panic. Windows were shut everywhere and clothing, which was snapping in the wind like ever so many flags, was hastily collected. All just in time for the rain to start falling. Rain with drops so huge that at first glance I thought it was hail.So you can understand why, upon seeing the world go dark, I rushed into action. And none too soon, because the tempest that struck last night was far worse than the one I first witnessed.
First came the winds, easily stronger than the one that stripped the siding from a building and tossed it around like crumpled paper. The trees were all bending last night and, surveying the scene this morning, several of them snapped. A nice, tall pine, for example, that has always had a good, triangular profile now looks like it's wilting because the top snapped and is hanging to one side. Three trees right next to my building have had major load-bearing branches just break off, one falling toward and almost leaning on the building. A pile of wood palates in a neighbouring yard that was once stacked neatly is now scattered to the four corners
and what's left of the pile proper has a thick tree branch stuck on it.
Next came the rain. Only the rain didn't come in drops. It came as a torrent. I sometimes joke about Niagara Falls opening up over Wuhan. Last night it did. I won't be joking about it anymore. Now unlike that last rainstorm I detailed, East Lake didn't jump its banks and flood streets. This rain didn't actually last all that long. It fell out of the sky and briefly turned all the streets into rivers (I'll explain how I know this below), but the torrent lasted maybe five minutes. Then it turned to regular rain for about 20 minutes. Then it went away leaving only (much-weakened) wind behind.
And lightening. Oh
man was there lightning last night! The most glorious display I've seen since that tornado that wreaked havoc in Edmonton and then passed over where I lived in Regina (sans tornado). When that storm struck, there was constant lightning, turning the world into an eerie, strobe-lit scene. I even witnessed it striking a radar tower at the airport (which then spewed sparks far and wide and proceeded to catch fire).
That's what it was like last night, although as far as I could see nothing actually hit the ground; it was all an aerial display that put the best of fireworks to shame for sheer glory. (Oddly there was very little thunder, and what there was was very muted rumblings long-delayed after the lightning that triggered it. I think the closest the lightning ever came was about 5km from timing it -- and that was the stuff that was directly overhead!)
And the power loss. Did I mention that yet? I didn't? Well, suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, all the power in my building cut out. And in the neighbourhood buildings. And in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Indeed as far as the eye could see there was
no light at all (aside from the flickering stuff overhead). Now there's an inconveniently placed mountain between me and the bulk of the city, but given what I saw, I suspect the whole city had been plunged into darkness. Obviously the lightning did touch down somewhere, and where it touched it wreaked havoc. For a good 20 minutes nobody had any light other than the occasional flashlight or candle visible in the windows. Then, after I briefly looked up from my Nintendo DS, I noticed that the business district kitty-corner across the lake from us had light. Shortly afterwards the neighbours around us all had light. We were an island of darkness in the neighbourhood, matching the university behind us. Our compound is owned by the university, you see, and, apparently, gets its power feed from the university, not the neighbourhood grid.
At this point I got tired of sitting in the dark while everybody around us had light. The rain had long ago stopped. I was curious to see what the rain did in the neighbourhood, and it was time for my evening exercise walk anyway. So, over Joan's objections (who was convinced I was going to get struck by lightning which had, by that point, receded to over 20km away) I went out for my walk. This is where I saw the aftermath and concluded that the rain had turned all the roads into raging rivers.
Everywhere I looked I saw signs of things being swept into the streets and down the hill -- including things like piles of bricks. The street vendors were all out in force by this point, but it was apparent from watching them that they were tense and unhappy. One DVD vendor was carefully inspecting his stock, for example, while one vendor of fried potatoes had a pile of raw potato chunks piled on the dirt next to a half-empty bucket of the things. Obviously it had been knocked over by a miniature flash flood.
We got our lights back, eventually. In fact the timing scared about ten years from my life. When I went out for my walk I, naturally, walked down the stairs. (Elevators use electricity, recall.) When I reached the last step, I stretched my arm out to open the door and at
exactly the same moment that I touched the door, all of the university district lights came on. The hallway lit up. The building's exterior lights lit up. The bank of electrical metres lit up and beeped in unison. I jumped out of my skin and clung to the ceiling.
All in all quite a fun day.
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