After the rain that fell so heavily it made an ark of my Columbia City home, and after lashing winds that recalled those portentous moments before a ghost appears in a horror movie, there was silence at around 6 a.m. My room was totally dark, and I thought that the city might have its third very short and very bleak day in a row.

Then, there was a flash. I first thought it was the headlights of a passing car; then I thought it might be something malfunctioning in my head (madness had finally arrived at cockcrow). But just as I was settling on the explanation of an after-image from a dream (I was dining with the dead again), there was a brighter flash of blue-white light. It was followed by the thunder of the previous flash. It was a distant thunderstorm.

The thunder had a Biblical intensity and scale. It was like the end of the world, with its four horsemen and reanimated corpses. It was an awesome sound. There was first a sharp crack in the sky, and then a descending and spreading rumble, and the climax of a terrific boom that rattled and rocked the angels in heaven and the demons in hell.

I thought the thunderstorm would soon be over our city, and its cracks, rumbles, and booms would kill the confused seagulls, toss the Sea-Tac-bound jet planes to the sea, and flatten the old and new buildings. But the clouds suddenly cleared, and the sky was blue at sunrise.

And it was sunny all day.