Thursday 23 January 2014

Storm

Pictures should be self explanatory, the story self evident from the depiction. Ordinarily I wouldn't use this one. However a few facts might help to show what an amazing weather feature is coming towards us. Those are not cloud shrouded mountains ranged across the horizon. This is Uruguay, a country of hills but no Andean watersheds, despite the plethora of 'cerros' on a map. This is a storm front, twenty thousand feet of turbulent weather. A blue black wall of roiling trouble. Our road is trekking straight into it's gob, or more accurately Hades is racing down the road towards us. By the time we start to rise over the next inevitable rolling hill, it's reared up until it becomes our world, we're being swallowed into it's maw. The temperature drops five degrees in twenty seconds and I've been blown off the road. Despite the anticipation, the attack is sudden, it's still a surprise. The gales visiting all the airts of a compass, often all at once. We won't trust in the gum trees, their shedding branches in confirmation of their reputation as widow makers. The safest place would be a bus shelter, we've passed several today, but even Amazon can't deliver that quickly.

The howling in the fence wire, the raging in the trees, the ear-rending wind clamour fills our reduced, confused space that fills up with swirling spray from the next lumber truck. Then it all stops. The excitement passes and we're left regurgigated in the silence of a dull wet day and a humidity that could be spread with a spatula. Five minutes later along comes a bus shelter.