Observing and describing in Storm Boy 5: Describing the weather

The winds lost their senses

But wait… it gets worse again!

In the final period, the ‘year of storms’ reaches its peak. When you read the text, look at how Colin Thiele tries to make these storms seem like the worst of all.

In July the winds lost their senses. Three great storms swept out of the south, the third one so terrible that it gathered up the sea in mountains, mashed it into foam, and hurled it against the shore.

Storm Boy(1963)

Let's break down how the description has escalated.

...and we’re only going to talk about the worst one!

Many of these describe human emotions and actions, making it feel like the storm is in a rage, with a personal grudge against the characters and their home.

  • ‘the winds lost their senses’
  • ‘gathered up the sea in mountains’
  • ‘mashed it into foam’
  • ‘hurled it against the shore’
  • ‘lost’
  • ‘swept’
  • ‘gathered up’
  • ‘mashed’
  • ‘hurled’

Any of these techniques will help you make your writing in this snippet explode! As we’ve already mentioned, this part has to eclipse the previous two sections. If the weather was cold before, now it’s freezing. If it was pleasant, now it’s fantastic.

Here are some examples of how the weather can peak.

By February, the sun seemed ready to explode. Bushfires raged in the bone dry bushland surrounding the city, the closest one so large that its smoke covered everyone, blinding eyes and choking lungs.

Just after Christmas, the rain vanished, leaving the bright sun and blue sky to stand helplessly as the floods took over. The waters gathered in the mountains to the west then poured into the South Pine River, opened it like a zipper and spilled over the banks and onto fields and roads and houses in a vast, unstoppable tide.

Write your own variation.
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