We had a doozy of a storm roll up on the Outer Banks today. The winds are normally pretty steady out here, but they were strong today, with gusts up to 40mph. Not great conditions, but these houses are usually built with hurricane-force winds in mind. The whole week I have been feeling the house shake with the wind; the flexibility built into the structure doing its job.
Today the house was shaking a little more than usual, and that, combined with some heavy downpour, meant that we decided to stay inside for most of today.
It was as evening began to approach that we got the alert:
Tornado Watch. Please move to appropriate shelter.
Hurricanes are one thing, but Tornados are quite another. Fortunately most of the family had left this morning, leaving only 8 of us in the house. The Watch also had a very short time-frame, less than half an hour. So we relocated into the movie room on the lower level of the house. A large space with no windows. It was located against two outside walls, so not ideal, but it was the best we could do. My wife pulled up a streaming weather report whilst I kept Thomas occupied with an episode of Daniel Tiger on my kindle.
A Tornado Watch just means the conditions are right for a tornado to form, it doesn’t mean there actually is one. The storm passed right overhead, and we lost power for all of 5 seconds when a bolt of lightning struck nearby, but that was about the worst of it. My father-in-law even managed to put in an order for dinner at a restaurant about 10 minutes south of us, so that’s how localized the storm was, and how swiftly it passed. It was definitely frightening on one level, but as Shakespeare once put it; it was “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Whilst it came to naught, the aftermath was a sight to see. As the moon rose over the Atlantic Ocean, you could see the storm head out to sea, periodically illuminated with spectacular cloud-to-cloud lightning. Even as I came to bed this evening (just before I began to write this) you could still see it, angry storm clouds on the horizon, only visible by virtue of the sporadic bursts of lightning, and the bold silvery light of a moon just past full illuminating a ghostly path out to sea, in a night full with the clearest stars I have seen in a long while. It was truly awe-inspiring, and very beautiful.
I can’t begin to imagine having to live in a place like this, so vulnerable to weather events like that, and on a regular basis. I also have trouble reconciling the idea of something so dangerous, so potentially destructive being able to produce scenery as beautiful as it did. The weird juxtaposition of beauty and danger seems to be a hallmark of the Outer Banks and it makes you really respect the sort of people who call this place home all year round.
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Anatopism 