Thunderstorm Crescendo

I'm attempting to create a controllable thunderstorm for a film, and this is my first legitimate attempt.

This recording consists of 4 samples of rain, and another 3 samples of rain+thunder that I recorded one afternoon.

Equipment used was the inbuilt mics on a Roland R-26, and a Sennheiser ME66 into a Sound Devices 702. The clips were recorded at 96kHz/24-bit, and they were processed at 48kHz/24-bit.

For processing, I put the samples into Kyma, and crossfaded for texture.

The howling wind sound is an analog-style low pass filter's frequency, level, and resonance being controlled by a Wacom Intuos4 pen/tablet.

The rain slowly swells, which was done by changing parameters of a granular reverb.

The thunder was also controlled by the Wacom tablet, with X, Y, and Z (pressure) dimensions mapped to making the thunder swell in level, density, and texture.

This could have been output in surround, but I don't have that many monitors ;). This style of "rain-synthesis" can also go on indefinitely.

Please let me know what you think of the quality of this track; eg, if it sounds real, if the wind sounds ridiculous, too much thunder, etc.

Use this sound (wherever) if you want to, or let me know if you'd like an mp3 of this, or for it to last longer. I'd like some credit if you do use it, but it's no big deal.

A blog is up explaining the method of creation here:
http://www.kylehughesaudio.com/2/post/2013/02/tempest.html