There has always been something magical about a storm.

Whether it is loud or just windy, it sparks a sense of home and belonging. I have always felt nostalgic when I am in the midst of a storm, although I prefer to be at home when it happens, but it is wild and evokes passion on a slow day.

Storms have forever been in stories and folk tales of old, sometimes even a caricature in a story, for example in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it is portraying the wild west and new lands, and the great unknown. The storm acts as a catalyst in the story, where the character Prospero believes that fortune has brought his enemies to the island and, “he uses his powers to raise a storm which shipwrecks [his enemies]” (Royal Shakespeare Company). Water, rain, and storms are deemed to have magical powers that are not always evil, they can be healing in the right context, or act as a catalyst, which changes the course of the story.

Thunder storms are nostalgic to me, because when I would visit my grandparents in Texas in the heat of the summer when I was younger my imagination would run wild as an only child. I would awake at 3am in the morning to the gush of wind and thunder, and smile, as my half asleep and half awake brain would delight in the magical forces around me. Of course, I was never in a dangerous situation in these storms, otherwise I would have a very different story to tell.

What if, when the tides change, and if fairytales were really true. What if, I would think lying awake in bed at night under the storm- what if the storm was signaling that a huge change was coming for all of us, on our comparatively small land and planet. A fairy, witch or wizard such as Prospero, could have spawned this change, so that our little lives could be whisked around for the better… or for the worse? I figured, I could decide this in the morning, and smiled as I drifted off back to sleep.

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Blog about the magic of storms by Madelyn Thompson

Biography:

Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The Tempest. Royal Shakespeare Company. https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-tempest/#:~:text=other%20human%20being.-,Revenge,heavy%20tasks%20to%20test%20Ferdinand

The Perfect Storm