Effective word choices

[munley]

Here are some passages that describe a common scene (a bad storm), but it is not all wording we've seen a million times. The word choices are precise and well-chosen.  These quoted passages are from A.J. Cronin's Hatter's Cottage.
There is a passenger alone in a train compartment and the train is approaching a bridge in a storm so intense that people hesitated to get on the train in the first place:

It began to rain, and the windows of the compartment became blurred with a dismal covering of wet and slush. The pounding wind flung great gobs of sleet against the sides of the train with a sound like the slash of a wet cloth, whilst rain hissed upon the roof of the carriage like fierce streams from the nozzle of a gigantic hose.

[A garrulous, drunken shepherd enters the cabin and leaves after a while. Now the train is entering the bridge.]

The violence of the gale was now unbounded.  The wind hurled the rain against the sides of the train with the noise of a thousand anvils, and the wet snow again came slobbering up the window panes, blotting out all vision.