The Wrath of the Just

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Like so many things in life, that leg of the journey started by chance.

For a year and a half, nothing unusual happened on the Atlantic Ocean midway between America and Europe. A few whales and some trash floated by, but not a single ship or sailboat or column of smoke loomed on the horizon. Nothing. It had never been part of a major trade route, but the absence of humans was even more pronounced now. It was as if every human had disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving no one to give a thought to the unusual things happening there.

Over several days, the August sun heated up the water’s surface by four or five degrees. Tons of water evaporated, then cooled and formed a dense layer of clouds. At the same time, the atmospheric pressure plummeted, causing the wind to move in giant, lazy circles and pick up speed.

Had a meteorologist been there (only about forty were still alive around the world, and they were too busy trying to survive to worry about isobars), he’d have said that a convective storm cell—a supercell—was brewing. But no one was monitoring the storm, so no one posted a warning. Meteorological satellites had gone dark or crashed into the atmosphere. Thirty hours later, no one witnessed the moment the supercell became a Category 5 hurricane headed for the coast of Africa.

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