It was an unusually hot summer on the African coast. Five hundred miles off shore a warm wind caused the water temperature to rise creating evaporation. Mist rose into the atmosphere, where cooler currents picked it up, carried it aloft, and the mass began to swirl. High above the sea, anvil-shaped clouds, dark and ominous, formed, hung suspended, waiting for the moment when the infant storm swirled and slowly began its journey westward.
Twenty-five hundred miles away, on the Carolina coast, an old black woman shuddered, and pulled her shawl closer. She stared into the darkening night and muttered, "Someting bad goin' fall. Someting real bad."