Excerpt from The Storm by Robert Ferro

The practice of naming meteorological systems has a long and storied history that dates back centuries to the earliest sailors who used saints’ names to refer to, document, and discuss the impact of significant weather phenomena.

But our purpose isn’t to dive deeply into that history.

What you, the reader, needs to know is that the names we give to storms are ways to help people warn others about the potential impact of large weather systems. Naming a storm makes it easier to communicate about them, both in real time and in historical records. For instance, the Padre Ruiz hurricane struck the island of Dominica in 1934, reportedly killing 230 people. The San Felipe Segundo hurricane of 1928 claimed the lives of over 2,500 people in the United States, mainly in Florida and around Lake Okeechobee. Hurricane Katrina will forever be known as when the levees of New Orleans failed, and when Kanye West said that President Bush doesn’t care about black people.

Instead of saying, ‘a category 5 Atlantic hurricane with wind speeds as high as 165 mph threatens to make landfall in the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana,’ you can simply say ‘Hurricane Andrew is coming, and he’s a dick.’

What allows meteorologists and sailors the opportunity to name storms is that most large weather phenomena form over extended periods of time. They can be tracked with tools and satellite imagery. Scientists can predict their general landfall areas and issue warnings and alarms. Mayors and Governors and Presidents can order evacuations. We know when a big storm is coming and we can take measures to diminish the impact on our daily lives.

But the weather system that struck globally in the early days of 2025 was different. It gave no warnings, sounded no alarms, appeared on no instruments, and was tracked by no scientists.

Only after surveying the wreckage, counting the lives lost, and estimating the economic damage did humanity give a name to the weather phenomena.

In the Spanish-speaking world, it was called La Tormenta. In the Middle East, it was almost exclusively referred to as Aleasifa. In Indonesia, it was named Badain, and in Japan, Arashi.

Each language bestowed its own name, each culture told their own stories about it. Yet all the names can be translated to the same thing: The Storm.

Because how else could you refer to a weather system that struck every nation in the world simultaneously, caused untold loss of life, created global economic devastation, and changed human society in unimaginable ways we still struggle with defining today?

There are days in history which stick in the mind of everyone who experiences them. The JFK assassination, 9/11, the day the Cubs won the 2016 World Series and exercised the Curse of the Billy Goat.

Everyone remembers where they were the day The Storm hit. In telling their stories, some try to downplay their experiences, offering sparse details and glossing over the larger events in hopes that they can forget what occurred. Others embellish their stories, gradually transforming their accounts slowly over time until their version of events barely resembles what actually happened.

Some narrate their experiences truthfully, simply stating the facts as they lived them, believing the extraordinary events of the day need no embellishment. Others remain silent, haunted by the psychological trauma that lingers years after the fact.

And then, of course, there are those rare events that we might never fully understand; either because no one was there to witness them, or no one survived to tell the tale. In those cases, we can only make educated guesses about what happened, never truly knowing what occurred there.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Like so many others, I have my own story to tell about what happened on the day of The Storm.

I was one of the fortunate few, spared the horrific experiences later detailed in news reports and courtroom proceedings. Nobody was racing to interview me about what I experienced, nobody was hoping to learn what I saw.

It started when I was driving home from my parent’s house, speeding along the freeway in the early morning hours, when the sky turned pitch black.

Rain poured down on the highway, slowing traffic and cutting visibility in half. Every car around me slowed to a crawl as we inched forward, nervous about the sudden deluge we found ourselves in. My windshield wipers were on full blast, but it made almost no difference against the torrent soaking my car. Like most of drivers on the freeway, I decided to pull off to the side of the road and wait for the storm to die down. I pulled off to the gravely shoulder of the freeway, turned up the radio to pass the time, and waited.

Then, a flash of lightning lit up the sky for miles in every direction – a brilliant blue-grey that seemed to capture a snapshot in time. Through my windshield, with the wipers furiously swiping away the raindrops, I saw the figure in the sky.

I only caught its outline, and only for a brief moment. But what I saw will forever be etched into my memory. It was several miles tall, silhouetted against the sky like some great eldritch god. I couldn’t tell what creature it was, only that it was massive, terrifying, and completely alien to anything I had ever seen before. Enormous tendrils stretched from its body for miles in every direction, glowing yellow eyes pierced the darkness, seeming to stare into my very soul. To this day, if I close my eyes, the imagery of the creature can be seen as clear as day.

I was one of the lucky ones on the highway in that I had already pulled off to the side and had parked. Despite the torrential rain, there were still cars pushing forward heroically – or perhaps foolishly. And as soon as the lightning flashed and the creature was unveiled, it set off panic in those cars. A few hydroplaned, a few stopped in the middle of the highway, and a few had the presence of mind to sneak off to the shoulder and park their car.

Feeling a mixture of awe and curiosity, I opened my door and stepped outside. The rain that was pinging off my car’s windshield acts as a opaque shield, blocking my view, disrupting my sight of the creature in the sky. Something deep inside compelled me to try and get a better look at whatever it was I had seen in The Storm.

Others on the freeway had the same idea. Up and down the side of the road, people left their cars and stood in the pouring rain, unable to believe what they had seen and desperate to catch one last glimpse of the impossibility that had been laid out in front of them. Even the few drivers who had continued to brave the roads eventually dragged themselves out of their cars, hoping to catch sight of the apparition that had appeared in The Storm.

Once more, a flash of lightning lit up the sky. And once more, I saw it.

To me, it looked like an elephant striding through the clouds, its thick legs powering it forward, its trunk split into four horrible tendrils that flapped wildly in the wind.

All sound in the world seemed to vanish after the singular flash of light revealed the massive creature for a split second. It was as if the entire world had fallen silent, like all the sound was sucked out of the air so that those of us on the freeway could fully absorb the awe-inspiring sight. Moments later, sound rushed back with a thunderous crack that I felt deep in my chest.

Cars screeched to a halt, spun off the road, and crashed into each other. Those of us who had pulled over to the side of the highway had our eyes fixed on the sky when we saw the creature. The same was true for those who had been driving. Some drivers jerked their hands in fear, twisting their car steering wheels and causing their cars to hydroplane along the freeway. Crashes piled up and cars slammed into guardrails. Yet none of that caught my attention. All my focus remained skyward to the creature that was no longer visible.

Everyone saw something different.

“I think it’s swimming this way,” said the man closest to me. His entire family had piled out of their minivan to stare up at the sky in shock and horror. When he spoke, his wife looked at him incredulously.

“Swimming? What are you talking about?” I later asked her what she had seen, and she claimed that it was a massive pillar of darkness that stretched upwards to the heavens.

Her oldest daughter insisted that she hadn’t seen a creature at all. All she saw was a hazy, darkened form that terrified her. She claimed that she could feel it staring at her, its gaze piercing her very soul. When I later asked her to explain and expand on her feelings, she simply shook her head and shut down, as if horrified at the very idea that some unknown entity could learn everything about her with a single look.

Their youngest child, an eight-year-old boy, said he saw glowing eyes in the darkness, shifting through various hues. When he talked about it, he clung to his father, seeming to never want to let go of his hand.

As the rain slowed to a drizzle and the sky brightened, revealing nothing in the sky like what we had all seen, everyone on the freeway seemed to snap back to reality. People rushed to help pull victims from wrecked cars, administer first aid, and clear the road. I, meanwhile, ran among the groups, desperately collecting stories of what happened and asking people what they had seen.

What few were willing to share their experiences echoed what the family next to me said: they all described different things they had seen in the sky.

Everyone who got caught in The Storm on the highway and left their cars to witness the being in the sky saw something unique and personal to themselves. No two stories were the same. Some, like me, saw a weird eldritch entity that defied all comprehension, but their description of the creature differed from my own. Some people saw beams of light that stretched from a single point. Some saw what they described as feelings. No two descriptions were the same. The only thing that was similar was the feeling of unease that the being had left in each of us.

No matter what we all saw, no matter what we took from the experience, none of us on that freeway will forget where we were when The Storm came.