The sky outside the window began to scowl. It turned the color of an old bruise, and the sun hid behind heavy, grey pillows of clouds. Five-year-old Maya stopped drawing and watched with a sinking heart as the branches of the trees in the garden began to bend under the onslaught of the wind.
"It's coming," she whispered to herself, and her little heart began to beat faster. She did not like storms. The noise, the flashes... It always seemed to her as if the whole world were angry with her. She wanted nothing more than to crawl under the bed and wait for it all to pass.
Just as she was about to run to her hiding place, she heard a strange sound from the garden. It wasn't the rustling of leaves or the whistling of the wind. It sounded like... buzzing and clicking. And it was very close, right under her bedroom window.
Curiosity was stronger than fear. Maya tiptoed to the window and peered out, her eyes narrowed to a tiny slit. In the grass, not far from her favorite raspberry bush, a small, silver robot was spinning in circles. He was about the size of a soda bottle, had two small wheels, short antennae that wiggled funnily, and a red light blinked on his chest. He looked confused and a little sad. He spun in place, beeping quietly: "Error... error... measurement failed."
Just then, a bright, silent flash of lightning cut across the sky. Maya flinched. Right after it came another sound. Not thunder, but a desperate beep from the little robot. "Not measured! Not measured again! The storm-o-meter is broken!"
For a moment, Maya forgot to be scared. The little creature needed help. She quickly ran out onto the covered terrace. "Hello?" she called out cautiously. "Are you all right?"
The little robot stopped and turned his small, round head toward her. His optical sensors blinked green. "Greetings, human child. I am Bzum, meteorological unit 7. And no, I am not all right. My system for measuring the distance of storms, the so-called 'storm-o-meter', is non-functional. I can see the lightning, but I cannot start the counter."
"The counter?" Maya didn't understand.
"Yes," Bzum explained, moving closer to her. "To calculate the distance of the storm, I need to measure time. The precise time in seconds between when I see the lightning and when I hear the thunder. Light is very fast, it gets here almost instantly. But sound is slower and takes a while to arrive. But I can't measure it now. I would need... a human stopwatch."
Maya thought for a moment. "A stopwatch? Like on a watch?"
"Exactly! Or someone who knows how to count seconds. One second lasts about as long as it takes to say 'one-thousand-one'," Bzum added.
Suddenly, Maya felt important. She knew how to count. To twenty, for sure. And helping a new friend was tempting. "I... I can count," she said shyly. "But I'm afraid of storms."
"Fear is just information that we don't understand something," Bzum said wisely. "When we understand it, the fear gets smaller. I promise! And besides, we will be in a safe place. Science and discovery must always be safe. That is rule number one!"
Maya liked the idea. "Okay then," she agreed. "But we have to be inside."
"An excellent plan!" Bzum chirped. "We need to build an observation station. Safe, cozy, and with a good view."
Instead of hiding under the bed, Maya and Bzum started carrying pillows and blankets into the middle of the living room. They built a fantastic fort, a kind of scientific observatory. Through a small opening between two large pillows, they had a view of the sky, but they were far from the windows and any metal objects.
"Alright, we're ready," Maya announced, settling in comfortably next to Bzum, who buzzed contentedly. "Now what?"
"Now we wait for the signal. The first flash of lightning," Bzum whispered.
It didn't take long. The sky lit up again. Maya instinctively ducked. "There it was!"
"Now! Count!" Bzum urged her.
Maya gasped. "One... two..." she began quickly, but then came a deafening roar. THUNDER! Maya was so startled that she forgot to keep counting.
"It doesn't matter!" Bzum immediately reassured her. "This was just the first attempt. That's the best thing about science. Every failure teaches us something. Now we know we have to be ready and not let ourselves be surprised. Let's try again. Get ready."
Maya took a deep breath. Her fear was mixing with a new feeling—determination. She wanted to do it. For herself and for Bzum.
Another silent flash. "Now!" Bzum whispered. Maya closed her eyes so she wouldn't be as scared of the thunder and began to count with concentration, just as Bzum had advised, nice and slow. "One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, one-thousand-four, one-thousand-five, one-thousand-six, one-thousand-seven, one-thousand-eight, one-thousand-nine..." BOOM! The thunder roared, but this time she was ready. "Nine!" she shouted triumphantly. "I counted to nine!"
A green light flashed on Bzum's chest, and numbers appeared on his small display. "Excellent work, human stopwatch! Nine seconds. Now I will calculate... Sound travels approximately one kilometer in three seconds. So, nine divided by three is..." The result appeared on his display: 3 km.
"The storm is three kilometers away from us!" Bzum declared. "That is a completely safe distance."
Maya couldn't believe her ears. She had measured the storm! That scary thing in the sky suddenly had a distance she could imagine. Three kilometers was about as far as the walk to her grandma's house. Suddenly, it wasn't so terrifying.
She brought over paper and crayons. "We have to write this down," she said seriously, like a real scientist. She drew a lightning bolt and next to it wrote a big number 9.
The next flash was much brighter. "One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, one-thousand-four, one-thousand-five, one-thousand-six..." BOOM! "Six!" Maya shouted, with almost no fear. "Six divided by three is two!" Bzum calculated. "It's getting closer. It's about two kilometers away now. But we are still safe in our observatory."
Maya wrote everything down. Together, they watched as the numbers got smaller and then grew larger again as the storm began to move away. When they counted all the way to fifteen, the thunder was just a faint, distant rumble.
When the storm had completely passed and the sun peeked through the clouds again, Maya and Bzum climbed out of their fort. Maya was no longer afraid. She felt proud and smart. She looked at her paper, full of drawings and numbers.
"Bzum," she said suddenly, full of excitement. "We're a great team! What if we helped other children, too? The ones who are also afraid of storms?"
Bzum's antennae vibrated joyfully. "That is an excellent idea! We could start... a Storm Patrol! We would teach children how to build a safe observatory and how to measure the distance between lightning and thunder."
"Exactly!" Maya agreed, hugging her little metal friend. "I'll never be just plain scared again. Because now I know that a storm isn't evil. It's just weather. And weather is something you can understand."
And so Maya, once a fearful little girl, founded the first Storm Patrol in town with her robot friend, Bzum. And whenever a storm approached, she no longer hid under the bed. Instead, she prepared her observatory, her paper, and a pencil, and looked forward to the next measurement.
So, what do you think? During the next storm, will you try—of course, only with the help of your parents and in the safety of your home—to count how far away it is? Maybe you'll become a member of the Storm Patrol, too.