Although Isabel skirted us to the west as she raged her way north, we experienced some truly awe-inspiring winds. They weren’t the strongest I’ve seen, but the sheer fury of the clouds racing across the sky, the trees careening sideways with the gusts then springing back in the moments of calm, and the rush of air through my bedroom each time I opened a window to check the status of the storm felt just as passionate as the heaviest rains. Had it been raining with the same ferocity as the tempest, I would have been awake all night, either in reverence of the storm, or simply because of the noise of sheets of water pelting against the building. As it was, I spent one of the quietest nights I can remember. There were no neighbors drinking Corona on the hoods of their cars in the parking lot outside my window, there were no birds in the trees that dot the apartment complex, no traffic driving past — if there were any outside sounds, they were muffled completely by the wind, a white noise even gentler than the ocean, despite its intensity. Inside, the computer was off and unplugged and when I woke up even the fan was quiet, stilled when the power went out.
The lights had started flickering shortly before I went to bed last night, but the power was still on at 12:30, which is the last time I remember looking at the clock. When I woke up in my usual morning panic at 7:30 (the usual time), thinking, as always, that I was late for work, my fear was exacerbated when I saw that the usual red glow from my bedside table was missing. I instinctively reached for the light, then realized the futility of this a moment later. I’d sent my parents an email the night before, asking that they call me at 8:30 in case my alarm didn’t go off, but it hadn’t occurred to me that if the power did go off in the night it might still be off by the time I woke up and the phone I’d left by my bed was the cordless — which, of course, wouldn’t work without power. I sleepily fumbled for my cell phone, turned the ringer up, and set an alarm for 8:30, then tried to call work to check to see if we were even going to be open. Unfortunately, the call center was fully functional and I was expected to be at work as normal. I decided to go back to bed anyway, always desperate for any sleep I can get.
I didn’t sleep well, though, nervous that my phone’s alarm wasn’t going to go off, until finally at 8:20something I looked at the LED face and figured there was no way I’d fall asleep in the remaining few minutes, stopped worrying, and promptly fell sound asleep. Luckily, I woke up at 8:52, with 8 minutes until I needed to walk out the door, to the sound of the neighbor kids examining the damage outside. Normally I despise those kids as they frequently wake me up with their early morning noise, but this morning I was grateful.
The streets on the way to work were mostly empty of cars, but littered with debris as if, well, as if a hurricane had come through. It’s very quiet here, and most of the calls we’re receiving seem to be from the west coast where they have boring weather.
I love the hush that comes after a storm — manifested in so many ways. The air is calm and empty, all the animals are still in hiding, and, after a storm of even this magnitude, so are many of the people. It’s so peaceful I almost wonder if all we really need in the Middle East is a huge storm…