Snow tumbled from the sky in thick shards of white, as if the wings from millions of tiny moths had been plucked off and discarded furiously from the clouds. Hour after hour, inch by stealthy inch, it suffocated the February ground, with drifts that choked tree trunks and stifled hedges. Looking out across the field, one saw nothing but the endless onslaught of plummeting flakes, dropping noiselessly into a heavy blanket of white so stark it stung the eyes, with a silence that rang in the ears.

She pitched wildly across the icy parking lot, buffeted by violent winds from every point of the compass.

Unsteady and unbalanced, she was a ship tossed on high seas; spinning, skipping, cavorting across a deadly paved expanse in her efforts to simply stay upright.

Silently she cursed the four winds – who were all, apparently, afflicted by simultaneous bursts of coughing-fits – for their attempts at scuttling her progress to the safe harbour of the mall's front doors.

The blinding heat of that South Georgia Summer day vibrated across the searing brick road with a near audible hum.

A true story.

It was so hot that the infrastructure of the city was failing. The rails buckled under the trains. The tarmac of the roads stuck to the feet of those who ventured on it, the very electrical lifeblood of the city simply stopped. A short 30 minute journey stretched to a four hour ordeal, and a bookshop that I used to frequent spontaneously combusted. Venturing out in the sun without protection would cause your skin to blister within moments, and in the long term would cause cancer. The morgue was full before the bushfires started the following weekend.

Like ancient ruins through time, the washed-out sky above had finally begun to break apart. Brilliant rays of yellow and gold appeared, slowly reversing the devastation of our now beleaguered city.

Rain had fallen for several hours when the deep freeze took over. With the power out everywhere, most had no choice but to look at what Mother Nature had given to them as they slowed their lives to a crawl. When the sun came out, our town shimmered like a world of glass. Everything was covered in gem-like ice with the occasional flakes of snow embedded. Diamond covered trees, silver lined roadways, and gold leaf rooftops surrounded the awe-stricken residents as they gazed out their ice glazed windows. The beauty of that image with forever be etched in my memory.

The cold wind was blowing, underneath the steel grey sky that covered the land like an enormous concrete umbrella. With the power to freeze your bones and cut the flesh, it glided over the tops of the open hills, tearing off the last straws of grass, and the occasional drops of ice cold water it carried were like bullets. The howling amongst the houses and trees in the woods sounded like the screams of banshee foretelling the doom and death to everyone. The winter was coming.

Winter storm warnings beeped across the TV like a trail of fire ants. So I drove off to find the white, wet, stranger. I sped through a waterfall of drums hitting hard against the windshield, drowning the out the radio. I heard more warnings, muffled from the hammering and highway traffic, "Chains" and "local mountain," someone said.
Then, as I climbed higher, I was in it. Drops turned into clumps. Soft, yet heavy and falling fast, like spit balls frozen. I saw only white. I stopped, jumped out and was instantaneously drenched by piles of blowing rarity.

I did not have a toaster, so I simply put the bread on the dashboard of my car. Apart from the slight vinyl taste, it worked beautifully.

The overcast day sprinkled comfortable rain on the city. The weather radio broadcast, “Level 5 hurricane off the coast.” The rain became a threatening harbinger of fear, that vice gripped hearts and minds. The comfortable rain burst into a cannonade of battering missiles crashing down, echoing through the rooms we lived, thundering louder and louder.

Monomaniacal wind teamed with lightning, pushing the rain, sending torrents of chaotic water to flood the earth and plunge everything into a murderous darkness, that concealed terror of the fleeing and those who stayed, and afterward, who survived the hurricane to write about it.