I love a good storm - everything from the surprisingly heavy downpour of a tropical monsoon to an eastern Canadian city covered in an overnight blizzard. A good storm demands your attention and focus, removes the concerns of a normal day from your mind, and, above all, is fascinating. A storm acts as the protagonist in the majority of the stories told of that day.

The best storms are prairie thunderstorms at night. The massive horizon provides a fascinating backdrop for the show. You can see the onset of the storm when it is hours away. You see the entire storm as it plays out. The lack of city light amplifies every thunderbolt. At times, it creates a strobe light effect. The rain pours down until it hits its nadir. After that, the intensity lessens until you’re watching a receding storm. There was a storm.

I was once tasked with moving farm equipment back to the farmyard in advance of a thunderstorm. The day was hot which meant the impending storm was sure to be large. There was one last piece of equipment to be moved. An open air swather built in 1969. The steering mechanism was unique: two levers that controlled their respective sides of the swather. To make a left turn, you pulled the lever towards you on the side you wanted to turn to. To do pivot turn, you put one side in reverse, and the other forward. It wasn’t quite that easy, though. The thing was almost 30 years old, and the gears were worn in such a way that it required some intimate knowledge of the swather’s shortcomings to be able to drive it. As I was dropped off in front of the swather, the rain was starting. The storm would follow.

I was only three miles away from the farmyard, but the swather had a maximum speed of about 10 miles per hour. I didn’t make it to the farmyard before the storm hit. The rain made it hard to see the road unless there was lightning to light the way. I was soaked; there was no protection from the rain. You could see lightning hit the fields next to you. The steering mechanism made everything ten times worse; I was over steering left and then right and all over the road. Thankfully, there were no other cars on the road. It would be stupid to go out in this weather. As I passed the barely visible landmarks that I knew were along the way — the railroad crossing, the farmyard, the stop sign a the intersection — I was positive that something bad would occur. When I heard thunder and saw lightning at the same time, I thought to myself that I’d remember this instant in my life.

The storm was visible in the distance as I drove into the farmyard. It was someone else’s problem now.