Summer storms are normal. But I never thought we’d live through something like this.
I remember crossing the south of France and feeling the moisture evaporating off the plants under the force of the sun. The heat those days was so intense that the atmosphere seemed incapable of absorbing any more energy. Heat, humidity and days of stillness converged into absolute fear.
Crossing the Rhine, our phones started going off. Continuously. In French, they warned that an extreme storm was expected within hours — and we were right in the middle of the red zones. We crossed the Black Forest and the alarms went quiet. Three hours of Autobahn still ahead of us, where speed is only limited by will. The sky started closing in, just as the light began to fade.
A breeze picked up. Darkness fell fast and lightning flickered in the distance. I pulled out the camera to channel the nerves, while sending our location to our host. 50km to go and the van was being driven with more anxiety and less speed. In the rearview mirror, the clouds were forming a vortex — more structured, growing larger — which meant it was gaining on us. The storm was moving faster than we were, and the wind was slowing everything down.
The lightning came one after another. A nervous spectacle that would frighten anyone. Nobody wants a storm in the middle of a motorway. They make me euphoric. Must be the nerves.
It started raining in a way that felt obscene. You couldn’t see three metres ahead through the volume of water drowning us. Hail. Golf ball-sized. And a night already thick with the cyclone sitting right on top of us. The wind made it impossible to control a vehicle that was supposed to be our home for the next few weeks — and we weren’t even sure it would survive this second night on the road. We had to stop. Between one lightning strike and the next, we spotted a bridge not far ahead. I remember perfectly the water seeping through the door seals and running down my trousers. I was certain the windows wouldn’t hold against the hailstones if we didn’t reach the shelter of the bridge. I was also certain that if we pulled over on the hard shoulder, someone would rear-end us. Vehicles started piling up behind us, all searching for cover under a bridge too small for everyone. A coach blocked the road behind us and I could finally breathe.
We held on there until the storm — which had hunted us down — allowed us to set off again. Calm returned. But this was only the first of five storms that shook Central Europe that July.
