Weather and Meteorology

Weather gets our attention like nothing else in nature, with the possible exception of more unusual and often more destructive forces like serious disease and earthquakes. We like the weather when it strikes a balance that pleases us--not too hot or cold, not too wet or dry. Soft breezes are fine, but strong winds are unwelcome, bringing with them everything from expressions of dismay to destruction of our dwellings.

Today the streams in my watershed, both large and small, natural and artificial, were momentarily overwhelmed. Heavy thunderstorms began last night, and by the early morning hours, the ground was saturated and a lot of water was following gravity down all the channels. An especially strong storm in the early afternoon overloaded the drainage systems. Water flowed over the streets, unleashing flash flooding here and there. The creek in my backyard, dry in summer except when the rain is heavy, swelled with surging currents.

Storms take us out of ourselves a little, and if they don't inconvenience us too much, they provide some welcome drama. We find ourselves in a suspenseful narrative that builds from moment to moment. Will the power go out? Will a tree fall on my house? Will tornadoes form? Will anyone die?* Local TV stations often preempt all other programming to follow the progress of severe thunderstorms, especially in tornado season. They keep saying the same or similar things over and over, and in their droning repetition overreach for their center-stage prominence as expert interpreters alerting us all to the possible dangers in the unfolding events. Yet some of their frequent updates hold crucial information, particularly when tornadoes loom, as they do at certain times and places. 

Often, though, you really don't need a meteorologist to know which way the wind blows. Outside when the weather changes, you know that the air feels different, and the color of the world changes.

We live in a time when many of us get our "nature" from documentaries. Or nature may only capture our interest when an arresting image is selected for us, perhaps artfully composed by a talented and patient photographer, and printed on the glossy paper of a calendar intended to celebrate beauty in the wild. I enjoy these photos myself, and enjoy many of the images from my own camera. But I recognize the second-hand character of carefully selected images, and similarly, I admire the willingness and ability to observe closely in the one who chose the images directly. The greater satisfaction lies in cultivating and applying the habit of observation that notices the scenes with the kind of immediacy that comes from being present to one's surroundings.

Late yesterday, before the storms came in, they were foreshadowed by the cooling air and the rising wind. In the night, thunder cracked with a raucous insistence, the kind of thunder that probably made some of our distant ancestors sit up in alarm and wonder at what the gods might be up to. The early morning, usually bright, was dark with heavy clouds and the dense downward rush of raindrops. After a few hours of intermittent sun, the afternoon's brief but intense deluge literally changed the atmosphere again. At the end of the heaviest downpour, with the last raindrops still gently falling into a liminal space, the sun emerged from somewhere around the west as the storm blew on its eastward course.

So weather is hard to ignore. It doesn't allow us to pass so much of the experience to other observers. If we're in it, close to it at all, we simply can't take it vicariously. The heat on our faces in the summer sun, the cooling breezes across bare arms, the smell of dry leaves accumulating in fall, the sometimes cloying perfume of greenery and flowers in midsummer fields, the shock of cold winter wind, and the first thunderstorms of spring all press themselves into our senses. We feel them, see them, hear them, and smell them. We even taste them in rain and sweat and blowing dust. All our senses are involved.

We will hear the wind and the rain over the weatherman's observations on the radar, but the weather reports still claim a lot, if not most, of our attention. If we think about it, we understand too that even the radar, the barometers, and the maps are extensions of our own senses, tools we've cleverly contrived to help us see what's coming our way a little earlier, a little more clearly. We constantly work on increasing our ability to control our environment, and when we can't control it, we apply our efforts to predicting it. Such efforts have deep roots in human history, encompassing burnt offerings to gods as well as more practical innovations, like the growing powers of observation that eventually, long before radar and weather faxes, allowed expert mariners who could interpret signs in changing winds and skies to run for sheltered coves when such havens were available.

The direct, unmediated experience that once dominated the human condition, though, is less prominent now. Intimate contact with the elements is still unavoidable, but we nevertheless have a different experience of our world. The words that we use are different. The list of terms we use to describe being in the open air--wind, cold, heat, rain, sleet, hail, storm--all have Germanic roots. They've been in English a long time. The term "weather" is Germanic in origin; "meteorology" is Greek. The word "radar" is among the first commonly used words to have entered the language as an acronym (for "radio detection and ranging"). In my grandparents' generation, no one needed the conceptual compression such acronyms make possible.

In the world we live in today, the public trust goes most readily to approaches regarded as best able to offer a measure of control. But we are old creatures. We still need to explore our experience from our own particular vantage points. Meteorologists know about atmospheric thermodynamics, and can use their understanding of natural movements of energy in the heat engine of the atmosphere to help us figure out when we might need an umbrella. Even having the umbrella, though, won't stop us from feeling like we're walking through rain.


After the day's early-afternoon storm, the electricity has gone out, as it sometimes does on stormy days. I sit with my back to a window on the west side of the house in the last hour or two of daylight. The light on the pages of the book I'm reading is the light from the low sun streaming through wind-tossed leaves in the trees between the sun and the paper leaves of the novel in my hand. The light dances around in moving, mottled patterns for a while, against the static patterns of print on white space. Then the sun moves below the trees behind me, and the pages I'm reading are lit by dimmer, duller light. Twilight has begun. I'll read for a few more minutes, then I'll have to wait for the repair crews to get the lights back on.

When the lights have been off for two and a half hours, power is restored. If I'm curious about the weather for tomorrow and the days ahead, I'll be able to get expert meteorological advice, delivered by one electronic device or another. The world I'm confronted with wants me to open the psychic space to accommodate both weather and meteorology. I'm curious enough to try. 


*Note written the morning after the storm: I woke up to learn that ten people died in tornadoes in central Mississippi, 150-200 miles or so south of where I live. The twisters ran along a northwesterly line from Vicksburg to Yazoo City. Weather forecasts, for those who hear them in time, can provide early warnings that give people opportunity to take shelter. But tornadoes born from severe thunderstorms form quickly and move in unpredictable ways. For those in vulnerable places, they're sometimes nearly impossible to avoid.