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Category: weather

Time for Sun

Time for Sun

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What a difference the sun makes. It’s cold, slightly above freezing, a steady breeze blowing off the lake. But the day is friendly, not the alien weather of yesterday, which was inhospitable to humans.

I say this from experience, after first rambling along the shore and then trudging up to the ridge, where the combination of exertion and distance from the lake made the temperature almost bearable.

Today there are sounds of life, some hammering next door, an occasional car engine. It’s time for me to go outside — if for no other reason than to know how good it feels to come back in! 

Rain Power

Rain Power

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I don’t love the rain but I do appreciate its force and manner, the way it reminds us of elemental things, of topography, for instance.

My neighborhood is laced with the tributaries of Little Difficult Run, and when showers are heavy these timid trickles become raging torrents. I’ve seen bridges lifted off their moorings and deposited downstream. I’ve seen small lakes form as creeks flood their banks and become rivers. I’ve seen trees topple, their roots torn from rain-loosened soil.

Today’s deluge is not enough for that. But it’s enough to make me remember.

(Before the storm.)

Late Summer

Late Summer

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Here we are in the dog days of … September?  I’ve always counted early September weather as the most reliably pleasant of the year (blue skies, low humidity, plenty of sunshine).

This year quite the opposite. It will be 94 today. The air conditioning, mostly off all summer, finally has a chance to flex its muscles. We had September weather in July; now we’re having July weather in September.

I’m glad for this sticky heat that makes me long for fall. Late summer in more ways than one.

Where the Rain Begins

Where the Rain Begins

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Last evening, after a long day at the office, I was sitting in the car waiting to turn left from the park and ride lot when I saw the rain begin. It was less than 50 away from me. I could see it sheeting the cars paused on the other side of the light but it hadn’t yet reached me.

At first it was like that infinite pause between when you cut your finger and you start to feel the pain from the cut — there’s often a lag there. On the other hand, there was a fellow-feeling with those cars drenched before mine, a sympathetic pain, almost flinching from rain that was not yet there.

Then I watched the rain advance across the pavement, fat drop by fat drop until finally it was pounding, pouring, a deluge.

I drove the two miles home with the wipers on full blast, and then, by the time I pulled in the driveway, it had almost stopped again.

I love the mercurial weather of summer, its flightiness, its lack of steady intentions.

And last night I loved watching the rain begin.

Drenched Garden

Drenched Garden

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Spongy mulch, dripping ferns, glistening flowers.

The summer garden got a good soaking yesterday, and this morning it is renewed, refreshed, restored.

I’m still thinking about the tropical gardens, though, the orchids and bromeliads, how they draw their sustenance from rainfall cupped and gathered, how they use it to make food.

Plants of the air, plants of the earth — water common to both.

Blackberry Winter

Blackberry Winter

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I grew up with this expression, used to describe a patch of cool summer weather. I’ve been thinking about it the last few mornings waking to temperatures in the high 50s — in July!

“A colloquial expression used in the south and midwest North America referring to a cold snap that occurs in late spring when the blackberries are in bloom,” Wikipedia says.

That’s not the way I remember it. Late-spring cold was dogwood winter. Mid-summer cold was blackberry winter. The time when blackberries were in fruit — not in flower.

Doesn’t matter. Both are lovely ways to talk about unseasonable chill. Poetic descriptions of essential contradictions. 

And the blackberries are in fruit and ready for picking. I see them along side roads and fence rows, in what remains of the meadow. They should peak this weekend.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Land Between Storms

Land Between Storms

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Driving home yesterday, dashing through puddles left from an earlier shower, racing to reach the house before the skies opened for another deluge, I thought about where I was. It was an interval of time, true, but it was also a place. The Land between Storms. The terrain: Steaming pavement, black clouds, a feel in the air that was part peace and part anticipation.

How many other times are places? The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, the last week of May. But these are fixed in time, not mobile like the Land Between Storms.

There is also the place that springs up after a blizzard. A world of white — silent for an hour or two then filled with the sound of snowblowers whirring and shovels scraping.

It has taken me a long while to realize the commonality of these experiences, how they pull together sights, sounds and smells so reliably, so ineluctably, that I can find the places every time.

It’s Back!

It’s Back!

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You forget what it’s like. The feeling of moving slowly through the atmosphere, pushing it aside, clouds of moisture.

You forget what it does to your hair. How all attempts at order and smoothness are in vain.

You forget how it warms and comforts you, this steam bath that we move through most summer days.  And the muggy nights, so full of ache and promise.

For the last weeks we’ve lived in a dream: cool nights, warm days, sweaters after the sun goes down. But something was missing.

The humidity is back. Summer is here.

May Day?

May Day?

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Here we are at May Day — sodden, squishy, water-logged. The petals of our dogwood, our Kwanzan cherries, scattered and beaten to the ground. Our airy forget-me-nots hardly the azure clouds they were three days ago. The azaleas hesitant, unwilling to bloom.

After this winter, I’d hoped for a knock-’em-dead spring. Something to warm and delight us. But nature doesn’t operate like that, I tell myself. Rain pelts and puddles — or fails to fall at all. Winds  funnel and destroy. Sometimes, snow even falls in spring.

The balance we seek, the recompense, is not in the natural world. If it is to be, we must supply it.

Coverage

Coverage

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It seems as if we’ve gotten all our April showers in the last two days, last night in particular. Walking to and from Metro in these downpours has made me ponder the efficiency — or inefficiency — of my umbrella.

The way I look at it you have a choice. You can either have a small umbrella with you at all times, a folding insurance policy, or take along a large one when the weather calls for it.

I’ve opted for the former. It’s easier to maneuver, fits in a pocket or bag and is light to carry.

But what it boasts in portability it lacks in coverage. It’s the diameter, I guess. There simply isn’t enough nylon to keep all the drops at bay.

I think there’s a life lesson here; I’m just a little too soggy now to figure it out.