It was a dark and stormy night

"It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose. == Origin == The status of the sentence as an archetype for bad writing comes from the first phrase of the opening sentence of English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford: It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind that swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Source: Wikipedia — It was a dark and stormy night (CC BY-SA 4.0)