As far as the eye could reach, above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled the air like one vast waterfall.

Detached clouds swept imposingly up the valley, as if they were endowed with independent motion and had special work to do in replenishing the mountain wells, now rising above the pine-tops, now descending into their midst, fondling their arrowy spires and soothing every branch and leaf with gentleness in the midst of all the savage sound and motion.

Others keeping near the ground glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief with admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth again seemingly clearer than before.
The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass.
When, therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from gaps and openings of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of separate and apparently antagonistic impressions.

The bottom of the storm is broken up into innumerable waves and currents that surge against the hillsides like sea-waves against a shore, and these, reacting on the nether surface of the storm, erode immense cavernous hollows and canons, and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long trains, like the moraines of glaciers.

But, as we ascend, these partial, confusing effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld united and harmonious.
The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became.
The drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which explained many perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in plain terms, while the texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it out and rendered it more complete.