Photo Friday / 5.30.2025
Twelve days ago, while I was sitting on the couch in my living room, a storm swept through Northwest Arkansas.
I had the windows in the room open to let in the cool springtime air, and the sounds of the afternoon breezes and the drizzle of rain. It felt very still. And then, in only a matter of minutes, it became darker; the breeze and drizzle became a whipping rain and a sound of pelting ice; the power went out and the light of lamps was replaced by lightning strikes; the house filled with shouting storm, and my roommate struggled to hear my voice mere feet away. It sounded as though hundreds of pop guns were being fired all at once.
For a time we walked about the house and looked out the windows in wonder at the tremendous power of nature we were witnessing. When the noise had calmed a bit, we opened the front door, and watched as a river flowed away north where our road normally is. Across the water we saw our neighbours also peeping about the front porch of their home, marveling at what appeared to be a winter wonderland that had sprung up around them on this Arkansas afternoon in May. What a sight it was.
The hail having come to a stop, I walked about the neighbourhood with my camera and looked at the aftermath of the storm. The olives of ice that covered the ground gave way under my boots and melted into clouds of vapor, and the water continued to flow away down toward the exit of our little townhome community. The trees, only young saplings at this stage, looked like they’d been through some very rough trimming at the hands of an unskilled arborist, and their leaves had been ripped away and spattered across the walls of the houses. The steady noise of flowing water could be heard everywhere. The field to the east had turned into a river. In the distance I could hear sirens ringing.
Having grown up in the rural plains of Illinois, I’ve always found springtime storms beautiful, even peaceful; yet this was a first for me, a new experience of the power of the forces of nature. Wind and rain and ice which spring up from nowhere like a hidden enemy, and threaten to tear down your home and leave you without shelter. Truly, I am grateful for a home, grateful for the safety it provides, a refuge that so many do not have. I am grateful too that I took the time to go and walk about after this wild storm and document some of its aftermath. Even without the photos, I don’t think I’d be likely to forget it.
Praise be to the God who commands the storms, and calms even the raging of the seas.