I'm a weather nerd. I get it. I like researching the difference between frontal rain and heat effect rain. I check accuweather daily during hurricane season. For those of you who aren't weather nerds, hurricane season runs from the end of May til November. I have sites that I favor for different weather-researching needs. Weather.com is the default on my phone. (I don't know what this means. But what I intend it to mean is that when I press the little square on my phone that has a sun on it and says weather, I get linked to Weather.com) I use it occasionally. Accuweather has a good section on the tropics that is well-updated both with maps and a written forecast. I like that. Wunderground has the best regional forecast and local forecasts, such that I can find out if it's raining at the baseball stadium even if it's not raining at my house.
Also, at Wunderground, there is an infographic enumerating the world's weather-related news for the day. Marathon Key, Florida had an all time low temp for June 16 of 75 degrees. This summer has been full of "world's hottest" and "world's coldest" records, which might lead some to consider climate change as a viable scientific reality, or not. But, nonetheless, there I am, checking my weather facts. Accuweather has assured me that dry Saharan dust (is there any other kind? Not Saharan but dry.) is being drawn into the tropics and hindering the development of tropical waves. This pattern is usual for this time of year.
During the school year, it is my duty and pleasure to be the first one downstairs. I turn on the computer and the coffee maker at the same time, and it's a race to see which will be able to produce happiness first. (That first cup of coffee is pretty essential in the morning.) I then shout the weather forecast up to the kids and M from the bottom of the steps.
Not, by the way, that there is EVER real, significant change in the Mobile weather. The main difference is whether there will be a sweatshirt in the kids' uniforms. And, for what it's worth,on the 3 days per semester when I get the kids from school, it is guaranteed to rain.
Our weather options for the school year are pretty much: hot, warm and rainy, warm and humid, cool, cool and rainy.
My sister is also a weather nerd. In her defense, she is a geographer (?), so it's kind of ok to be a nerd. She teaches her students about volcanoes and plate tectonics, and climate change, and earthquakes, and while these aren't actual weather events, they sort of fall in to the category of it, and I'm ok with that. She and I will often talk about the totally bizarre weather extremes in our sections of the country. Here, in Mobile, AL where more rain falls than in any other city in the US (DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED, SEATTLE) humidity is a way of life. Overnight rainfall totals are measured in multiple inches. The Fourth of July weekend total was over a foot. She lives in Phoenix, AZ. A foot of rain is like a century's worth. We compare relative humidity and dew point temperatures. The dew point around here is often 72 or 73 degrees. Where she lives, it is often in the single digits, or even in the negatives. People in Phoenix look like raisins. People in the South look like reconstituted jerky. Phoenix temps can soar into the one-teens. Here, we seldom see the dark side of 100, but enjoy it vicariously through "feels like" temperatures.
My Dad, also is a weather nut. I talk to him about once a week. In that conversation, I get a weather recap. Like an inept weather man, he doesn't forecast what's going to happen, he just accurately details what is currently happening or what already happened. Ironically, he lives in Southern California, a region defined by its fundamental lack of weather. It's perpetually 72 degrees there (when it's not on fire, sliding down a muddy mountain, or being rocked by earthquakes.) Stranger still, he lives in this a strange cove of land where it seems to be its own micro climate. While he's shrouded in fog so thick it's soupy, folks three miles inland are perfectly fine.
Nonetheless, I get this weekly weather update. "It was too cold to nap outside" (Below 72 degrees) "It was too windy for cocktails on the beach" (Below 75 degrees, 20 mph wind) " It was gorgeous outside, we had lunch on the patio" (75 degrees, limited wind, bright sunshine) "It was miserable and damp outside. We had to turn on the heat." (Fog, temperatures below 72). I also get the accompanying astronomical data: "too cloudy for a good sunset." "Great Santa Ana winds, gorgeous sunset." "Fire in Riverside, surreal sunset." "Perfectly clear afternoon. Looking forward to the sunset. Should get a green flash."Don't know what a green flash is? Click here
The Green Flash. The holy grail of astronomical phenomenon. Dad sits out there, martini in hand, waiting, waiting for the green flash at sunset. Any guests or relatives will be summoned out of their small talk, away from their dinners to pause, wait and then debate whether or not there was a green flash, whether or not they actually saw it, and whether or not it's actually a thing. I bought my dad pint glasses from The Green Flash Brewery in San Diego so he could have a green flash every night. The Green Flash is so rare, such a literally infinitesimal moment that it seems like only a micro percentage of the world will ever see it. I, for one, can't even see the sun actually set, because it sets behind trees and forest and my neighbor's house. There's no green flash for me. There's no "moment" when I can see the sun set.
So, when I think about these conversations between me and my dad and occasionally, my sister, I think it's so weird that we're comparing notes on this. Me, looking up weather for kids' uniforms, her tracking weather news for current event exercises in the classroom, my dad using weather and astronomy to order his post-retirement day. For most people, the weather is incidental, an afterthought to their plans. An inconvenience, or an unexpected respite. For us, the weather moves to center stage. It dictates the quality of my dad's day. While I get that, I find myself annoyed that the events he postpones because of weather aren't really 'events' at all. He took his nap inside instead of on his fancy wicker outside sofa. He drank cocktails on the leeward patio rather than the beach. As it turns out, I'm not jealous of the weather, just the lifestyle. Bummer.
No comments:
Post a Comment