Something was off; I could feel it the moment I awoke. It was a morning in mid-June with an overcast sky and oppressive humidity that felt like if I squeezed the air, it would release water like a sponge. Despite the overcast skies, temperatures still managed to climb to an uncomfortable 85 degrees by mid-morning without a hint of a breeze. My mother often hung clothes to dry on lines strung across our back yard, and when dried, the clothes had natural freshness from being out of doors. The air today had none of that freshness, and smelled of dampness and dirt.

The weather report on the radio talked about an unstable air mass that had moved into the area creating conditions favorable for storms. Everywhere I went on that morning, I felt clammy, like a thin film of perspiration covered my skin. The humid air had the effect of sucking your energy and making it a struggle to do small tasks.

Around 2 PM, the light outside changed, and darkness more closely associated with sunset descended on the streets and houses in our neighborhood. It looked like a scene from an eerie movie set where the crew and actors had left for the day.

There was an unusual silence outside you don’t often experience within a city, and at first, I did not comprehend how that contributed to the strangeness of the scene. Songbirds, barking dogs, and even pesky insects went quiet and looking at the sky to the west, I saw the reason. Stacked up on the horizon were the blackest storm clouds I had ever witnessed. These were not typical gray clouds with a darker underbelly; these were black with jagged tentacles reaching toward the earth. The blackness had a dirty oily quality, almost as if the clouds had been born over some polluting refinery belching black smoke.

The sight of the ominous-looking clouds was threatening and looked like at any minute they would rain down terror and destruction on anything in their path. There did not appear to be any movement in the line to the naked eye, nor was there any rumbling from within — just angry black shapes waiting to start their onslaught. I realized the appropriateness of the phrase, “The silence before the storm,” as I marveled at the stillness of the moment.

The light in the balance of the sky took on a yellow-green cast, and houses and other objects looked surreal, bathed in the odd light with the black horizon as a backdrop. I heard my dad tell us to get into the basement but could tell he was in awe by nature’s display of power and did not want to miss what was about to be unleashed.

I remembered the large clusters of loudspeaker horns mounted to the roof of the elementary school I had attended a couple of blocks from our home. I had never heard the warning siren before, and hearing it now added a level of foreboding.

The first drops of rain that fell were large and hit the sidewalk and flat part of a handrailing with a splat that reminded me of a small water balloon bursting. Slow and subtle, the black wall crept ever closer even though when watching, it did not appear to move. A dark shadow similar to nightfall replaced the odd colored light, and a sharp downdraft instantly removed the sticky remnants of the muggy day — the temperature plunging nearly 20 degrees in minutes. At the same time the temperature dropped, the storm came upon us, and the stillness was shattered.

 The stately elms that lined the boulevards in those days before Dutch Elm Disease wiped them out had their huge limbs widely swaying as turbulent winds rushed through them. Blinding flashes of lightning ripped holes across the sky, and sharp cracks of window-rattling thunder boomed nearly simultaneously following each bolt. It felt like all hell was breaking loose above us, and rain fell in huge torrents, pushed by wind that shrieked and howled as it rushed between homes. The wind nearly ripping the door from my dad’s grip, finally brought him out of his trance, and he quickly ushered us into the basement where my mother had already taken shelter.

For the next hour as the storm raged, I listened intently for the roar that tornado survivors often describe in the aftermath of a storm. There were a couple of times where I thought I was hearing that roar, but it must have been the heavy rush of wind through the trees because a tornado did not visit our neighborhood on that day.

When the worst was over, and we emerged from the basement, the air had a lightness. The storm had washed the dirt and pollution from the air leaving it clean and fresh. The rivers of water covering the streets at the height of the storm soon reduced to small streams running near the curbs. Intermittent drops from millions of leaves fell onto car roofs, sidewalks, and the street whenever a slight breeze ran through the branches of the stately elms.

I felt fortunate that the storm had not caused more damage. I later learned the storm had spawned multiple tornadoes, and it was just luck that one had not chosen our neighborhood to unleash its destructive force.