Storm - The Final Chapter

Storm: The Epilogue




The Spring sky had brought so many visual senses of calm with it that morning, with the flycatcher kiting in the air, its beautiful feathers aiding it in its fine balance in mid-stance. Gentle, rolling breezes began to shift the fields of wheat first, wave after wave of amber brushed by what appeared to be giant, outstretched hands repeatedly stroking its grain masthead to the east-northeast as the Sun rose from that direction. Drops of dew carpeted the edges of the fields in that dawn’s arrival, forming a watery diadem - a crown - for each blade of switchgrass for miles along the vast plain. Morning was drawing its first breath, awakening other inhabitants along with it, and from burrows and dens, from nests and other mostly hidden places. The warming of the earth by the gleaming orb in the sky brought along with it rising air currents that slowly, almost imperceptibly began to take flight upward in columns both great and small. In a broad sense, this was repeated numerous times in and over a square area of thousands of miles to the north and south. From the west, just leeward of a majestic mountain chain, there delivered was a broad fist of colder, cooler drier air that had drawn its strength from a impulse, an incredible and vast build up of energy that grew embryonically from the constant motion of the earth. A sort of river of air, mightier than the all the continent’s streams, by far mightier than the Mississippi itself, had gouged a new path through the halls and terminals above, overpowering nearly all living things in its path ... and slowing commercial aircraft with ease.

Groundward, the impetus was begun, for the breeze now had risen, strong enough to stir the corn just slightly, its immature stands and neat linear rows of green not quite knee high yet. The dark green leaves branching off the main stalk stirred, rustling together gently as the broad range of wind continued its earnest trek to its destiny. This column of air was different from its cousins; instead of rising upward higher ... higher still, this column rolled along the ground, like a huge unseen rolling pin, emerging from the south-southwest. It was a warm, moist feed, a freshet of humid deliverance from the Gulf waters from which it was borne.

The hawk, in all its red-tailed glory, screamed out to the wind aloft. Its outstretched wings captured every puff of wind rising, every slight deviation noted and adjusted for as it circled...circled looking for a fresh meal. The raptor knew the dawn of this day to be different, for it sensed that the updrafts were not as uniform, ‘supportive’ as they usually were. She was buffeted more than once, sending her into a downward spiral to a lower level - just above the tree tops bordering the vast field of corn below. The red tail knew instinctively that this effort of hunting would take too much of her strength, too much time. She, wiser now, saved her energy for the time being, banking on the future days to bring her sustenance.

The rolling column of air along the soil continued it constant motion; it was broken in places along the Earth where over ‘hotspots’ of uneven heating, the air lifting upward at various points. Like a giant Slinky toy of coiled wire, rolling along the ground, there appeared sudden shifts in its end and midsections, as if some unseen string had pulled its body skyward along a broad front. The constant rising pillar of air and this rolling column along the ground played out a tug-of-war for the bragging rights of motion, but the path of least resistance always won out in the end.

The zenith of the rising Sun began to arch further into the sky, the early morning’s cast of garnet red color was shorn and in it’s place, an unfailing blue hue filtered down upon the plain. The mid-morning sun began casting its broad rays of light and warmth in earnest, the vast, distant fiery furnace casting this way a wealth of august heat that began to dry the sea of diadems from atop the switchgrass. Slowly, slowly still, the evaporative process began , imparting to the air both vertical and horizontal its energy as the water assumed a new name -- ‘vapor’. Its transformation into its new, near-ghostly appearance was essential to the weather machine above and below; for within this vaporous world was an incredible amount of energy - which at any time, given the right breeding ground for physics to rule, could mean the difference between a bright, sunny afternoon .....or an evening of deathly consequence.

The wheat and corn, which began the morning with a duet and dance of gentle breeze and waving stalks, now began to sway with greater magnitude, the dark green leaves of the corn rattled against each other with vigor, bringing rapidly moving shadows against the coffee grind color of the rich soil below. Like wraiths, they appeared to be shadows of swords, clashing and slashing against one another in an otherwise anonymous battle of unseen foe. The wheat, a vast carpeting of golden hue, began a sort of belly dance along its bed of ground, its masthead moving to and fro, stopping long enough to be under the influence of the now more persistent updrafts that permeated its very being. The dance of the corn and wheat crescendoed and fell, rising chaotically and then falling like the sigh of tired children, children who had played the entire morning beneath an increasingly warm Sun.

The hawk, now perched carefully in the row of oak trees, peered into the southwest horizon from which the wind began to lift its brazen, strengthening head. She saw the innocent puffs of cumuli, cotton ball patches of irregular size, meshing together and congealing. There was something unusual about them conjoining so early in the day in this manner and instinctively, she flew down to a lower level branch that held up the large nest of twigs and small branches along with plenty of down and light grasses for bedding. Here her three chicks were born some weeks ago, a brood of remarkable vitality and movement - with the exception of one sibling who failed to thrive and ultimately, was forced from the nest by his larger siblings while their parents were away hunting. The male adult raptor had disappeared some ten days earlier, a victim of a fast moving vehicle that struck him while he tried, wings flapping furiously, to lift a dead rabbit from the shoulder of a road that he had just killed. Sensing his prolonged absence, the female withstood the extra workload - and endeavored to perform the parental tasks that normally two raptors would do with considerable difficulty.

The Sun, bearing down even more furiously now than ever, began to strike the upper reaches of the fast growing cumulus clouds with greater clarity, creating a sort of uplifting vacuum within these vast ghosts of the prairie, lifting them thousands of feet in minutes time. Their number growing and their size now becoming impressive, it was only a matter of time before the hydrological cycle would come to fruition. Initially, within the clouds themselves, extraordinary amounts of dust circulated within the region known as the troposphere, the initial layer of air closest to earth. Here nearly 95% of all weather occurs - but today, much more was destined to happen. Slowly, nearly imperceptibly, the mother bird of prey became more concerned, her instinct to protect her progeny began to take form. The wind now blowing full gusts, heralded the onset of unmistakable weather events. The hawk climbed into her nest, buffeted now not by the winds above, but by the wind rolling along the ground. She covered her brood completely with her wings quickly, not wishing to be thrust aloft by their outstretched ability to launch her ever skyward. Scooping them inward, she pressed down with her breast and lower body, pushing them into the down of the nest below.

The millennium of dust, lifted upward into the cloud cover’s belly, collided with minutest particles of water; they formed the template from which the newly formed water droplets could build upon its base, adding to its width and breadth. The updraft within the immature thunderhead, already impressive, lifted the droplets with terrific speed upward, adding to their size and weight, and once too heavy to be held aloft at that point, the raindrops began their descent in a straightforward manner. Once they arrived in the lower portion of the cloud, the updraft, with fingers outreaching from within its core, folded them back into the rising column of air once more, completing the cycle over numerous times in a matter of minutes. A rainstorm was in development.

On the ground, the horizon began to darken, the clouds joining ranks with a vengeance. From openings along this frontal boundary, there were windows of open air to witness the towering clouds, now called cumulonimbus, thrust upward in to the farthest reaches of the atmosphere. They formed characteristic ’anvils’, entire sections of cirrus clouds stretching past 60,000 feet upwards or higher. With any form of rain and dust nuclei collisions, static electrical forces began to form within the clouds ... and sister opposite charges formed within the earth below. Lightning flashed, both between cloud and cloud...then cloud and earth. One bolt struck within yards of the heavy oak stand, deafening the hawk and frightening her brood as well. They stirred against her chest initially but instinctively knew to hold fast. A second peal of thunder, the result of a cloud-to-cloud discharge, resulted in a long, continuous rumble that lasted more than twenty seconds. An electrical storm was nigh.

This particular thunderstorm cell, labeled a ’super cell’, began to behave in a special manner that bespoke of its great lethality. The entire storm, buffeted by the influx of warm, Gulf waters from the south and the river of air colliding with it from the Northwest, took on a revolving spin around its own axis, a result of the twist that was imparted by two competing forces. As this began, the ability of the storm to suck air upward from within its core grew to incredible heights and the air, called jet intake flows, began to arrive within its belly from all points of the compass at will. It now, like a hurricane in a sense, had developed into a self-sufficient monstrosity. It was a force to be reckoned with.

The hawk, thoroughly frightened and with no mate to help cover the nest, bore down atop her young with all her might. She peered through the very topmost branches of her nest to look southwest to see the completely darkened sky turn black at first...then yellow...then green. Pillow-like clouds formed above, called mammatocumulus , which foretold great instability in the skies directly overhead. The first large drops of rain, seemingly big as quarter pieces, rained down upon her head, neck, shoulders and back. She endured this regardless. She would gladly sacrifice her life for her brood at any time.

The corn and wheat, an hour before writhing and sighing in the late morning Sun, now began a sort of danse macabre, with a frantic race to their movements, being pulled in tremendous waves of opposing down and updrafts at first - then they themselves were exposed to the constant intake of the jet flow winds leading into the nearby storm cells core. The corn began to lose leaves, the green, tough foliage unable to withstand the riotous blasts of wind, while the wheat still sprung back upward with every lunge of the unseen malignant hand of the storm itself.

Far above, the raindrops still being lifted upwards, upwards were now thrust into an almost unimaginable zone of ferocious instability. Warm air, trapped beneath pockets of extremely cold, burst with extreme violence past the icy dome above and spring boarded into the very beginning of the stratosphere. Here, the oversize droplets froze, descended, collected more rainwater on its frozen surface...and rose violently once more. Deafening thunder, repeated lightning slashes meshed together, the malignant symphony growing exponentially for hundreds of square miles. All living beings were aware ...

The hail began to strike the sodden earth with mind numbing quickness, the balls of ice, some golf ball -- some softball sized, impacted the ground at 100 miles per hour. The sickening sound of hard, inert objects striking trees, branches, barns, stop signs was a sort of wondrous cacophony that few ever witnessed before. The regal oak tree, with numerous sturdy branches, deflected some of the hail away from the nest and winged family, but small branches, filled with green leaf litter, began to descend upon the redtail with alarming frequency, like the peelings of a cucumber undergoing the ministrations of peeler. Once ....twice...the hail struck the mother raptor, both along her back, nearly knocking the wind from her being but resolutely, she stood stock-still, absorbing the blows for the brood she was sworn to protect with her earthly life. She ducked her head straight down now, wondering how much more the skies would torment her and her young below....

A striking hush descended upon the plain in an instant; the midnight sky at noon now began to transform itself into a panorama of green, dark and malicious, so quietly it had arrived. Though mercifully the storm had ceased hurling deadly parcels of ice earthward, smashing nearly all in its path, it now had begun a procession of even greater danger. Above the tree and to the south - southwest, a wall cloud, a saucer-shaped appearing bowl of cloud bank first appeared, revolving counterclockwise about the base of the thunderstorm itself. It was a massive, menacing form, instilling fear even to the most practiced eye of farmer and meteorologist alike. It portended the arrival, sometimes of the most destructive force of wind known to humanity.

The hawk, sensing a change yet again, stood up and surveyed the damage to the tree, the numerous small branches with green oak leaves and immature acorns attached adorned her nest. She strove to quickly remove as much as she could, taking the branches and leaf litter away from her brood and began dropping them off the edge of the nest. Out of her amazing peripheral vision (for she too had seen the wall cloud twisting), she detected, from almost five miles distant, the faint stirring of dirt and debris lifting up from the ground below. Peering with her amazing eyesight, she also made note of a descending, wraith-like form of rapidly turning water vapor.....a tornado was being born. Unsure of what this apparition was, she took flight, seeking out its nature. The rain and hail had stopped, the lightning ceased....and now, she made a special effort to see what this strange phenomena might actually be......

The tornado formed separate vortices within its main vortex, a sort of series of spinning tops with one larger...spinning top. Sky Warn spotters, already alerting the National Weather Service, announced that ‘sisters’ had now formed...and were on a heading of east-northeast at 25 miles per hour. This was on a direct collision course with the red tail’s home, but she had already made the fatal mistake of not remaining with her young - leaving them exposed to a far deadlier onslaught than the hail that previously dropped like a scourge from the heavens.

The tornado, gathering up soil, dust, water and other debris , took shape - an elongated length of coil not unlike a whip, it began to rip the ground with ease, pulling corn and wheat asunder as it progressed through the countryside and farmland. Growing in girth and in size, the wind speeds began to clock above 250 miles per hour. “ The Finger of God “, trained weather spotters would call it, fear trembling through the ground where they stood.

The tornado, black as death, began to lift entire structures with it, telephone poles, pick up trucks, roofs....even tore the asphalt off of a stretch of highway, leaving bare packed sandy soil in place. The debris, deadly and moving with extreme speed, was lifted aloft into the air above; the hawk dodged several pieces of hay and a large part of a picket fence before veering back to her wooded aerie. She landed directly atop of her nest, the wind not allowing for a graceful reentry into her home. She dove atop her brood once more and saw the menacing cloud approach ever closer, its deafening shriek lifting the fears of anything living. More in fear than in defiance, the hawk screamed back ... and in an instant, was lifted directly upwards and outwards by the rage of winds tearing through the stands of trees. She was aloft in a heartbeat and blindly fought the winds tearing at her frame of feather and wing; ultimately, she was tossed into a veritable blizzard of debris that slammed her to the ground, rolling her repeatedly and into a ditch bordering a nearby road. Settling into a culvert, she collapsed into a small trickle of water nearly facedown, her head and body covered with mud. In an instant, she lay unconscious as the deadly, rotating cloud passed directly over her as she lay in utter blackness.....

The Sun, reappearing almost immediately after the deadly wind passed, shone tentatively upon the torn region, littered with every imaginable lifeless form. Trees, whose spiral grain of wood was opened by the extreme force of the twister, was filled with straw and once the tornado passed, the open grain of wood closed tightly shut again, giving the false impression of ‘straw being driven into a telephone pole’. One couple nearby, driving in a pickup truck, could not outrun the storm; their truck - despite having the accelerator floored, was stopped dead in its tracks - and was lifted and rolled into a corn field more than a thousand yards from where it went airborne. The husband, who survived miraculously, awoke to find himself in the cab of the pickup ... but his wife and child had simply vanished. As the rescue and search operation turned into the recovery phase, he wept as the State Troopers informed him that his wife’s lifeless body was located not far from where he currently sat - but the child was still unfound. Between sobs and the chatter of Motorolas, someone in the crowd heard a faint cry....from above. Much later, in the pitch black of night, with the quartz lights reflecting for miles in the distance, all radios were shut off, all talking ceased. As the groups of searchers began to doubt the veracity of the claim that a crying voice was heard, yet again - the cry, high pitched and clear voiced reached them ... from directly above.

Miracles do happen; a State Trooper, realizing that no one had bothered to look upward, shone his flashlight into the tree limbs, now broken and stripped bare of vegetation. There, hanging from a limb some thirty feet in the air, was the lost infant child; she had been lifted clearand free into the void and due to forces only God could understand, her jumper had caught that branch by the fabric of her neck. Papoose-like, she was suspended ... and soon asleep. When she awoke, cold and hungry, many had nearly given up on her for good. The father, eternally grateful for this gift from God, wept continuously, it was said, for a month. He even changed the name of his daughter and christened her with a new name ... Faith. A problem drinker for some time, he lived a life of great piousness from that point on, praising God in all he thought, did and said.

The hawk awakened hours later, in the early morning dawn of the next day, in mild shock and with trepidation. How did she arrive here, she did not know. Covered in mud, though she was, she could not stay here for long, for culverts were favorite passageways for predators who would surely kill her if she were discovered. Water though, was a miraculous finding, for it was here that she drank repeatedly and began to wash debris and dirt off her body, her wings and feathers. The death wind had actually torn some feathers from her breast and lower body but thankfully, the wing feathers remained intact. Bones, likewise, were not fractured. Bruised though, she tried her best to arise from within the culvert ... and into the morning stillness beyond. Once...twice ... she attempted to lift off the ground, flapping her large, beautiful wings but ... exhausted, she fell back to earth. Catching her breath, she lay there silently, just as if she had made a kill of a field mouse or pheasant. She perfectly knew the value of remaining unseen.

A coyote had heard the noise of the wing beats, and seeing nothing, reckoned that it must have been a bird of prey - standing over a kill. Coyotes, the most opportunistic of carnivores, need no encouragement in investigating any possible meal. In the aftermath of the storm, it instinctively searched its areas, noticing new sights and smells. Now, it knew that a target was nearby, and began a quick zig zag search pattern, using its eyes and nose, trying to locate its prey.

The hawk, crouching in the switch grass, was nearly invisible to this cunning canine - that is until the coyote smelled the hawk from twenty feet away. It swerved sharply, turning on its heels... and leapt into the air ...

The raptor knew that if only had one chance . It was now - or certain death. With a superior effort, it leapt for the blue skies above, flapping furiously, feeling a bolt of pain shoot through its ribcage as directly below it the viselike jaws of the coyote clamped shut twice in immediate succession, just barely missing her talons as she was soon aloft. Twice she had cheated certain death. Now, she set out to find her own young who, for all purposes, must have perished in the jaws of such an ill wind.

Flying higher, higher still-- she circled the region, looking for familiar landmarks ... there--that stand of oaks, off to the side of the numerous Osage trees ...

From above, it looked like the trees had been shorn of half their limbs ... and had little foliage as well. She came to the nest tree--and to her great consternation, there lay an oak limb, fallen directly atop her nest, dissecting in neatly in half.For all intents and purposes, it had pinned the nest of twigs into the base of its foundation during the passage of the killer wind. Frantically, she flew to its edge, pulling branches and foliage with all her might, pulling, twisting, grabbing. To her amazement, there, on each side of this deadly limb, was each fledgling, very much alive...and hungry beyond words. The thick matting of greenery atop of them had both kept the rain from drenching them, and at night, kept their body heat relatively stable. Miraculously, they had staved off hypothermia. Relieved as much to see them as they her, she cried out to the world her joy, her great relief. She nuzzled them close, one at a time, even having to cross over the heavy limb to get to the other youngster and inspect her from head to toe. Satisfied at last that all was in order, she took flight - in search of greatly needed nourishment. It came, ironically in the form of numerous chickens, killed in the storm, their feathers stripped clean off their bodies as they lay in fields; hungrily tearing through the fowl’s flesh, she fed her fledglings and then herself ...

As Spring advanced and the colors of Summer deepened, the fledglings grew much larger and began testing their wings for hours. The limb that severed their nest now served as a sort of springboard for them, a gang walk for which they could amble out of the nest directly and sense that their impending freedom was nigh. With the arrival of fresh breezes, the twin siblings would alternately hop directly upwards into the face of the wind, feeling as if they were kites on the end of strings. The maternal red tail, watching all of this from a nearby tree, watched closely and for all intents and purposes, awaited their maiden flight.

Freedom came that next morning. Both siblings took to the air in nearly flawless fashion, and despite a choppy interval of discovering the need to learn about rising thermals of air, they mimicked their mother and began circling the wide expanse of green and gold beneath them. Slowly, with each passing week, they learned to hunt, to spy from the heavens above.

Within a month, they were now flying solo, able and alone. They sometimes crossed paths, these siblings, with a glance and a cry, they still communicated the language they learned from their common nest. Off in the distance came the reply, a low vibrant sound, resonant and full bodied. The clouds had conjoined again, following the laws of physics, and from within them came a call as old as time itself. The mournful thunder spilled out over the plains with the clarion call of rainfall. The sun, off in the western horizon, had peeked through the veil of precipitation to the east. If one were watching they would have seen not two hawks circling but three, with the eldest at the apex in the sky marked by a double rainbow. Beneath the prism of color, the birds of prey paid homage to the world that they knew, a world that somehow others might think belonged, on account of them, to a lesser god.

A young father, holding his daughter with tears in his eyes, rocked her close to his chest, sitting on the front porch of his home, watching the clouds approach in the distance.

As the wind coursed through the now corn and wheat full grown, the rain fell gently upon the fields with steady purpose. The light began to fade as well, as the land and sky slipped into a twilight of rest and abundance. Summer’s final chapter was being recited, and all the world stood up and took notice.

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