Super Storm FX

Just when we never thought it was going to happen again, the heavens opened and the raindrops fell thick and fast, while bright-light flashes and mighty crashes rang over the land. And as if these special effects were not enough, we had hailstones, hard and white and popping furiously on car roofs and against windowpanes. Really: what is it about a robust thunderstorm that makes even grown men and women whoop with a delicious mix of fear and delight? No wonder the ancients invested these spectacular weather events with supernatural meaning. In Greek mythology, it was Zeus who directed lightening barbs at all our heads while further north, Thor took those honours; why, we have even named a weekday after the Nordic gent. Many centuries later, writers pulled the weather into use when creating atmosphere and extended metaphor. Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, is named after the storm that initiates narrative events, while the hapless King Lear casts himself naked into a grim storm, thus metaphorizing what humanity has done to him. Two and a half centuries later, author Charlotte Bronte puts the titular Jame Eyre through the same process but just in time, humans rescue her from the elements. Another hundred years and in Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, a storm causes the sea to surge and return the supposedly drowned titular character to dry land, much to the consternation of all around her. In our time, the storm has become the driver of that literary device beloved by GCSE teachers everywhere, pathetic fallacy. If time would permit, we could spend our lives, wheedling troubled hero/ines who listen to “thunder rumbling” and “lightening dangerously flashing” from the pages of literature. So, we leave it there, gloomy and sultry and overcast. But fear not; a heatwave is forecast for next weekend.