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Category: weather

Still Day

Still Day

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The clouds have pulled a big curtain between us and the sun. For once I don’t mind. It’s cool and still for this time of year. Insects muted.

A distant truck downshifts as it maneuvers over the speed hump. I hear the clatter of plastic wheels across pavement as the little boys across the street play a summer game.

In the backyard birds dart and warble. They like these kind of days, too, everyone taking it easy.

I stop for a moment, catch my breath, see the big picture in the page proofs I’m reading, glimpse the forest beyond the trees.

Air Test

Air Test

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Last night I slept with the windows open, so I woke up this morning thinking about the difference between air-conditioned coolness and bona fide coolness.

I prefer the bona fide, but why? Would I know the difference if I was blindfolded and led into two random, air-differentiated rooms.

I think yes! The former reminds me of walking into a deep freeze, artificial chill, wearing sweaters in the summer. The latter has more moisture in it and therefore more texture. Because it comes in from the outside, it is fragrant and humming with low-level insect buzz. I could tell the difference in a minute … I think.

But this morning I don’t have to. The windows are open, the air is cool and the blue skies shimmer with promise.

A Walker in Galoshes

A Walker in Galoshes

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The rain gauge says we received more than two inches last night. And it’s still raining. There are more flash flood warnings, which we take seriously around here, honeycombed as we are with the rivulets and tributaries of Little Difficult Run.

I read today that unlike hurricanes and tornadoes, flash floods are as deadly now as they were years ago. The main reason: People drive into deep water.

What about walking into deep water? Less of a problem, obviously, since most of us aren’t strolling through a thunderstorm. But still, it’s time for caution. For changing the route. For umbrellas and ponchos and galoshes.

One of these days we’ll have summer. Until then, I’ll keep checking the rain gauge.

(Speaking of rain gauges, the bamboo makes a pretty good one.)

What To Do When It Rains

What To Do When It Rains

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Conked out to rain, woke up to rain. Rain on the weekend, on Monday, Tuesday, now Wednesday. Dodging the drops to take a walk. Today if there’s a break I’ll be outside again.

Meanwhile, morning arrives gray and soggy. It’s a good day to clean the basement, sort through old files. Only that’s not what I want to be doing on July 3!

Tomorrow will be better, they say. Until then, I pile the books beside me. Four from the library yesterday and another, electronic one I couldn’t find in hard copy. That’s the one I’m reading now.

I’m in war-worn Berlin, riding the U-bahn, hungry, cold and afraid. Is it raining? Is it dry? Who cares?

In the Soup

In the Soup

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A cool morning has given way to a hot, sticky afternoon. But until a few minutes ago I didn’t notice. I’ve been doing what I do, sitting with a laptop, sending emails, editing an article, drafting a letter.

When I felt warm enough to check the temperature a few minutes ago, I read that we’re “in the soup” —that would be the high-humidity soup.

But I took that a different way. I thought about frogs that don’t notice they’re being boiled alive because the water is comfortable in the beginning.

Maybe those frogs are an urban legend. But I feel like one of them today. I didn’t know I was in the soup until I’d been in it for hours.

Flash Flood

Flash Flood

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Flash flood warnings are up in the area. Little Difficult Run, which winds its way through the region, has been known to spill over its banks, sending streams of water across low-lying roads and driving us into convoluted detours to avoid its overspill.

Today I’m working at home, so the only puddles I’ll dodge will be the ones in the driveway on the way to get the newspaper.

But if so inclined I could slip on a jacket, grab an umbrella and tramp through the woods to see if the creek is behaving itself this morning. Maybe I’ll do that. Just to stay in fighting trim.


(A tributary of Little Difficult Run in an earlier, quieter mood.)

Forty-Two

Forty-Two

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It’s cold this morning, but not as cold as in my dream. It was 10 degrees there, and I was running around telling people that there would be a 70-degree temperature differential the next day — from 10 to 80!

You know the weather is crazy when you start having dreams like that.

It’s t-shirts one day and sweatshirts the next. Jeans in the morning, shorts at noon. The air conditioner, then the furnace.

Soon the needle will settle on summer and I’ll be longing for a forty-degree start to the day. I’ll just keep telling myself that!

The Aftermath

The Aftermath

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Two days of weather and it’s raining not just drops but petals.

Blossoms fall from the trees, cling to sidewalks, cars — and park benches, too.

A house I passed yesterday in the twilight caught my eye, its front lawn covered with vivid pink petals, from a Kwanzan cherry, I think. If I’d had time I would have stopped and snapped a picture.

Instead I remember this: an ordinary house, a tree branching green, a yard with pink snow.

Snowquester!

Snowquester!

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Snow-starved Washington is finally basking in a day off that is not due to sequester-related furlough.

The government, schools, offices — all closed. Students, teachers, bureaucrats — even lobbyists, I imagine — are staying home and letting the world spin on its own for a few hours.

As predicted, it’s a heavy, wet snow — not so much falling as plopping from the sky. Or maybe it”s plopping from the white-coated trees. Or maybe both.

Today’s photo looks much like yesterday’s. But it’s not from the vault. It’s real time.

Will It Stick?

Will It Stick?

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Here in the suburbs of D.C. we don’t just argue about federal policies, we also debate what to call our snow storms. Though the Weather Channel calls the snow that’s supposed to start tonight “Saturn,” the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang has named it Snowquester. And it’s not giving up the fight.

Putting aside the more primary question — which is why, since “Snowmaggedon,” we feel we must name our snow storms? —this naming convention does reveal an interesting turf war.

Apparently, the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang asked folks to send them storm names last Friday, and the winning response was “Snowquester.” It’s the perfect appellation for a March snowstorm in sequester-weary Washington. And much more apt than Saturn, people say.

Will the name Snowquester stick? More to the point, will the snow?

We will have to wait and see.