Nature’s force

It has been unbearably hot for days now with temperatures in the 30°C and a most oppressing humidity of around 70%. It constantly feels like a major storm is about to break.

Yesterday afternoon it finally did.

It started as a huge rainstorm that makes you wonder if you have ever seen anything like it, and then all of a sudden it intensified and it started raining twice as hard! Then a vicious wind swept horizontal sheets or rain over rooftops, just before marble sized hail started bombarding doors and windows. By then the electricity had already been cut off (of course). I closed doors and windows because water started pouring in from everywhere in my second floor apartment: through closed windows, underneath doors and from numerous leaks in the roof I didn’t know were there. Windows were shaking, the roof was trembling and I could hear the zinc laminas on my neighbour’s roof banging. Lightning brightened the dark afternoon sky. It was quite scary… I felt I had to do something, so I locked my doors, as if that would keep the storm out. (Very smart, a friend remarked later, in case something would have happened, people wouldn’t have been able to enter my apartment!)

And then… It was over. The whole ordeal didn’t last more than 20 minutes. Of course it took hours to sweep the water out and clean up the layer of sand and grit that fell down from the ceiling. But I guess I was lucky. My next door neighbour’s entire roof was blown off and there were fallen trees and branches everywhere. I even heard that the tarp over the hieroglyphic stairway in the archaeological park was blown away, although no confirmation on that yet. But when I called a friend in the mountains to ask if there was much damage, she said there was none. It had rained hard, yes, but no hurricane winds as we had downtown.

Today people are still busy cleaning up and fixing things. But no matter how well you prepare, nature is always able to blow your socks off. Sometimes quite literally!