Ever written about a storm?

…They watched as the sea began to build, higher and higher, grey wave upon grey wave, until the wall of water towered above the masts of the frigate. For the longest time Peruzo could remember, the wave hung above them, smothering the dark sky behind it.
Then, with a thunderous roar, the wave came down and engulfed the ship…

I’m currently writing a stormy passage in The Burning Sands of Time, and the above is the first paragraph I have published on this blog. It’s a draft that will undoubtedly change, and perhaps the above paragraph might not make it into the new book - but I love this scene.

For me, storms are beautiful terrors. I love lightening and thunder and the raw power of storms (I think if I’d been born an American I might have chosen a career as a stormchaser – a career you don’t tend to hear about in jolly ol’ England). The closest I’ve got to a lightening storm was in Echo Point, Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains. My wife and I were doing the tourist-thang and taking photos of the Three Sisters when a storm swamped the Point. A lightening bolt came down not that far from where we were and the shock went through the metal-hand rail and into both Sarah and I. I remember seeing the bolt – as thick as my arm - strike the ground just in front of the rail by a couple of trees. The sound was awesome, like the fabric of reality had been ripped open suddenly and violently, and as we fled the Point for shelter from the rain that followed, I found myself gazing into the belly of that cloud - the colour of slate - hoping for another bolt to fall. We weren’t hurt by it – miraculously no-one was, though a few were really shaken-up by the experience.

Sarah doesn’t share my enthusiasm for lightening. In fact there are many I know who don’t, and while I love storms, I do have a healthy respect for them.
As for writing about one… Well I have never been in a tempest, but my imagination will be my guide for the one in The Burning Sands of Time. My hope is that I can bring the sheer excitement and terror of one to the written page, and sweep the reader away on those colossal waves…