Watching (Photos)

The snow come down.

My dear Moira once remarked that I was the only person she knew for whom weather was not small talk. Indeed, although I know "Hot enough for you?" and "How's the weather up there?" and "Raining cats and dogs out there" are trite stock comments of no earthly value, weather is not trivial. I have always experienced it as elemental, powerful, a matter of vital and emotional interest. I cried when it rained and I wanted to be outside. Thunderstorms thrill me, the green wash of sky that send down tornados, walking through deep, pristine snow still makes me feel like and intrepid explorer.

I get very irritated by the tossing about of the term Global Warming by the media, eager for an easy catchall. So many idiots on cold days try to wittily retort "So much for their Global Warming!" For years, we and our friends have tried to promote GCFU, Global Climatological Fuck Up. I would follow up with that whole bucket of environmental worry worms, but I need to sleep tonight, and get up in the morning. Thinking about it too much prevents both.

I remain fascinated by the individual cases, the floods and fires, landslides and tsunami, blizzards and tornados. I have NOAAon my menu bar, and I check it every morning before work. Not just the temp and forecast, but the dewpoint, and I look at the overnight readings, locally, and where our friends live. If I'd been better at math when I was young, I would certainly have been a meteorologist. All because of Mr. Novak and his morning blackboard forecasts, drawing sweeping cold fronts and describing pressure systems, his contagious enthusiasm feeding my particular interest.

I also love stories of escape from cataclysm. My own grandmother, terrified of thunderstorms, nearly died when the fireplace she'd been sitting near a moment before, was hit by lightening. The chimney collapsed and crushed her chair. And in nearly every rash of tornados, a baby is found in a tree, unharmed, far from home. A last survivor is rescued long after hope is gone, nearly crushed under debris after an earthquake, drinking rainwater that has trickled through.

The earth reminds us we are not entitled to our lives, nature gives not a damn whether we live or die, no precautions are sufficient in all cases. But there are loopholes, rogue waves, unprayable miracles.