Describe an extreme weather event or natural phenomenon you experienced

There are few experiences that reveal human insignificance quite like facing the untamed wrath of nature, and surviving a Category Three tropical typhoon three years ago is etched permanently in my memory. The meteorology bureau issued a red alert early in the morning, warning that the cyclone's eye would pass directly over our coastal city by nightfall.

My family spent the afternoon in a frantic flurry of preparation: we boarded up balcony glass doors, taped large crisscross patterns across windows to prevent flying glass shrapnel, moved outdoor furniture indoors, and stockpiled canned goods, candles, and potable water. By dusk, the tempest arrived with terrifying ferocity. Gale-force winds howling at over one hundred and thirty kilometers per hour rattled our windowpanes violently, while sheets of torrential rain pounded the roof.

Around midnight, the electrical substation down the street blew with a blinding flash of green light, plunging the neighborhood into pitch darkness. Listening to the ferocious shrieks of the wind in the blackness, feeling the entire building shudder slightly on its foundations, was deeply unnerving. It felt as though an angry leviathan was thrashing outside our door.

When we emerged at dawn, the neighborhood was unrecognizable: ancient banyan trees lay uprooted across avenues, utility poles were snapped like matchsticks, and streets were submerged in knee-deep flash floods. Weathering that tempest was a harrowing ordeal that instilled in me an enduring humility toward the sheer, unstoppable fury of the natural elements.