The room that measured the storm

An original descriptive passage set in an invented hilltop weather station.

The weather station stood alone above the valley, a square white building with four narrow windows. From the track below, it looked less like a place where people worked than a box in which the sky had been stored. The fields stretched away on every side, divided by hedges and thin lanes, while the building remained exactly where it had been placed.

Inside, everything had a measured position. Three instruments stood in a row on the central table, their needles resting above numbered scales. A wall chart divided the hillside into small squares. On a shelf, glass cylinders held samples of rainwater at different levels, each marked with a date. A strip of paper moved slowly beneath a pen. Its line rose and fell with calm regularity, as if the air had agreed to be counted.

For a while, the storm remained only a change in the light. The valley faded behind the windows, and the white walls took on the grey colour of the clouds. Then rain struck the glass sideways. It drew bright threads across the view until the fields disappeared altogether. The paper under the pen began to jerk. Its smooth line broke into steep black teeth, and the instruments clicked with such speed that their separate sounds became one hard rattle.

A map loosened from its pins and folded itself against the wall. Water ran beneath the door in a narrow, shining line, carrying a leaf across the floor. The building no longer seemed to hold the weather at a distance. It was being entered by it, sound first, then wind and water. The numbered cylinders remained upright on their shelf, but the rain outside had stopped behaving like a quantity that could be stored.

When the clouds lifted, the instruments returned to their quiet movements. The paper strip showed a dark, crowded patch where the storm had passed, and from the doorway it almost looked like a correction neatly written into the day's record. Outside, however, water travelled down the hillside in several shining routes, joining and separating among the grass. No square on the wall chart showed where one stream became another. The room had recorded the storm, but the hill continued to rearrange it.

How does the writer develop the impression that the weather station can make the storm seem orderly, and how far does the ending challenge this impression? Support your answer with references to the passage.