#TeaserTuesday: The Storm Was Ava

 

Sometimes, spring storms popped up spontaneously: a sudden streak of lightning, a mass of clouds that boiled up out of a sunny day. Startling cracks of thunder and sudden buckets of rain that soaked all the unsuspecting pedestrians who’d assumed they wouldn’t need an umbrella. But sometimes those storms were forecasted a week in advance. For days, the TV meteorologists warned of strong winds, torrential downpours, hail, and pop-up tornadoes. It’s going to be bad, they said. Make a plan. Have flashlights and radios at the ready. Be sure to get to the lowest level of your house, preferably in a room without windows. The whole week leading up to the day of predicted storms would be clear, and crisp, and it seemed impossible: how could anyone know that far in advance that the weather would be sinister five days from now?

But, sure enough, on the day, the sun rose up into a tumultuous sky; the air felt soupy and electric. Charged. Birds flocked high overhead, running ahead of the nasty red line you could see on radar, inching closer and closer as the day progressed, and the humidity piled up like wet quilts.

Maggie felt as if she’d been living one of those days: watching the bands of severe weather sweep across the state all day; breathing labored thanks to the thickness of the air; all the fine hairs on her arms standing on end as the static electricity built and built. When it struck, the lightning would not be a surprise, but it would still be devastating. And in so many ways, knowing a storm was coming, the dread of it, was worse than dealing with the sudden, unexpected appearance of one.

The storm was Ava, and it was brewing up like a pot of coffee, spitting tongues of lighting, grumbling with thunder.