Just when it looked like both sides were happy to escape from the clutches of Storm Amy with no real harm done, Craig Halkett turned up to blow the roof right off Tynecastle.
Two minutes into time added on in a game short on quality, low on chances and lacking the fireworks promised pre-match, the Hearts centre-back showed the control and composure that had been so hard to come by for both sets of players all evening.
After another attacking move had broken down amid the grim conditions, home substitute Sabah Kerjota picked up the ball on the right flank and fired a hopeful ball towards the back post.
It carried on the briskest of breezes, travelling at pace, and that’s where Halkett seized his moment. He timed his run perfectly, moved into space and took the ball on the half-volley to guide it with the side of his foot into the corner of the net.
The ground exploded. Halkett mimicked a golf swing and then ran all the way back into his own half to carry on the celebrations before embarking upon the kind of muscle-flexing pose that you might expect from a WWE wrestler at the end of a Royal Rumble.
What had gone before didn’t matter. You saw that at the final whistle. There were few handshakes between rival players. Those in maroon were too busy jumping up and down on top of each other and racing to the fans to mark a fantastic result.
Halkett watches on as his half volley earns Hearts a dramatic win in stoppage-time
The matchwinner gestures to the Hibernian support after the full-time whistle
Howling winds bring howling games, all right, but that is nothing to worry about when you find yourselves sitting five points clear at the top of the Premiership.
Manager Derek McInnes insists it is ‘stupid’ to talk about competing for league titles. That’s his prerogative. Whether his team’s fans agree is something else entirely.
They say that the mark of champions is digging in to get wins by any means necessary when things aren’t really going your way. Well, that’s pretty much what happened here.
You could argue Hearts had the best of the play on an evening where strong gusts made the ball hard to track and hard to deal with and buffeted both sides out of any kind of rhythm.
However, there is no question best of the chances undoubtedly fell to the Easter Road men and that McInnes’ men had to ride their luck at times.
The most outstanding opportunity, ahead of Halkett’s late clincher, landed at the feet of visiting captain Martin Boyle just a little while after the hour-mark and came within a matter of inches from changing the entire complexion of the game.
A ball carried on the wind made its way to him on the left flank and he hared into clear space in the area. Home goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow raced from his line to narrow the angle, but Boyle showed terrific technique and composure to dink the ball over him towards the target.
Hearts celebrate following Halkett's winner which moves them five points clear at the Premiership summit
Martin Boyle manages to beat home keeper Schwolow but the goal was ruled out for offside
The travelling support behind the goal, just short of 3000-strong and in rude form all night long, waited for the net to ripple and the madness to begin.
However, the ball hit off the underside of the bar, bounced in front of the goal-line and was then hacked away to safety by Stuart Findlay after what felt like an age.
Boyle also had a goal chalked off shortly afterwards, but he was absolutely miles offside, to be fair. His chance had come and gone and his team would pay the ultimate penalty in the end.
McInnes, meanwhile, preserves his record of never having lost at home to Hibs – a handy habit for a manager of Hearts – and can think of himself happy to keep momentum rolling despite a stodgy, often frustrating, performance.
Alexandros Kyziridis has been a real go-to guy in recent weeks, but it just felt, at times, as though his team-mates relied on him too much to produce a piece of magic on the left.
He did spark Hearts into a bit of life midway through the opening period with a shot that went just over the bar and fired in a free-kick moments later that missed everyone and ended up requiring an excellent save from Hibs goalkeeper Raphael Sallinger with his boot.
Boyle beats Schwolow a second time but saw this effort come back off the crossbar
In a match short on chances, Shankland found opportunities hard to come by
However, he just couldn’t make the breakthrough or provide the right kind of service to a front two in Lawrence Shankland and Claudio Braga, who toiled in the conditions along with everyone else.
Shankland had a couple of opportunities in the second period, in particular, in which he just seemed to dither at the key moment and allow the moment to pass him by.
TEAM LINE-UPS
Hearts (4-4-2): Schwolow; McEntee (Kerjota 84), Halkett, Findlay, Kingsley (Steinwender 84); Milne, Devlin, Baningime (Magnusson 90), Kyziridis (Forrest 88); Braga (Kabangu 84), Shankland. Booked: Baningime, McEntee.
Hibernian (3-5-2): Sallinger; O’Hora, Hanley, Iredale; C. Cadden, Mulligan, Barlaser, Campbell (McGrath 76), Obita; Bowie (Klidje 88), Boyle. Booked: Obita.
Referee: David Dickinson.
Attendance: 18,760.
You can’t be too hard on anyone, though. It was just a horrible night for a game of football. End of story.
The tone was set right from the kick-off with Hibs launching a real garryowen, the kind of thing more common at Murrayfield just down the road, into the Hearts half.
With the weekend’s weather bomb influencing proceedings throughout, it was an understandable tactic. In these conditions, playing for territory made a bit of sense.
There were long throws, long punts, questions asked of the Hearts’ rearguard in dealing with them. It coughed up an early chance too, with Boyle’s shot from an acute angle forcing a decent near-post save from Alexander Schwolow after a Jordan Obita cross had just evaded Grant Hanley.
Between Boyle hitting the bar and having that one chalked off in the second period, Braga did ask questions of Sallinger with a low shot from the edge of the area and was denied by a very good low save.
There was nothing the Austrian keeper could do to deny Halkett, though. And there’s nothing McInnes can do to dissuade Hearts fans from dreaming that a title charge is on this season.
The visit of Celtic to Tynecastle on the 26th is already worth marking out on the calendar with a big red circle. That has the potential to blow a wind of change through the game with more force than anything Storm Amy managed to muster.