Browsed by
Category: weather

The Brown Grass

The Brown Grass

Comments 0 Comment

Lawns are parched here in Kentucky, the grass crunches underfoot. I get thirsty just looking at the scorched fields, as if in hydrating myself I can somehow freshen the air. “We’re not the Bluegrass anymore,” Dad jokes. “We’re the Brown Grass.”

While the Independence Day fireworks display wasn’t canceled, the Lexington mayor banned everything else.  No firecrackers, sparklers or Roman candles. It’s a hot, mean summer here, 99 degrees in the shade.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but the storm that’s been teasing us for hours seems more likely now.  The sky has darkened, and, at their higher elevations, the oaks and maples bend with the wind. Will we soon be drenched in sheets of rain, will rivulets run down the driveway and into the streets?

Or is it like those tarmac puddles that shimmer on the summer highway and disappear as soon as you draw close to them?

PIcking Up Sticks

PIcking Up Sticks

Comments 0 Comment

Here in the leafy suburbs, when a storm whips through it leaves a trail of sticks behind. This is in addition to crushed roofs, smashed cars and downed trees. Compared with these, of course, twigs and leaf clumps mean little to nothing. Think of them as the comic relief of cleanup. What you do after you’ve drug the large limbs out of the garden.

And yet, once I started picking up sticks, I found I could do little else. There is the Zen-like rhythm of bending and grabbing and stuffing them in a bag. There is the way that spotting them trains one’s eye on what’s just ahead, nothing more, nothing less.

But there is also, yes, the obsessiveness of the hunt. I no sooner rid the yard of sticks of one diameter than I notice the next largest sort. Before long I realize that I’m grabbing what usually lies undisturbed in our yard, that I have long since rid our lawn of anything that could clog a mower. That I have, in short, become a bit compulsive about the task.

That’s when I stop dutifully bundling and tying the sticks with twine, or stashing them in recycling bags — and instead dump them in the trash with the rest of the garbage. It’s my own little clean-up rebellion.

It’s Called a Derecho…

It’s Called a Derecho…

Comments 1 comment

But I didn’t know that late last night when I heard the wind roar and the boughs and acorns clatter against the side of our (newly resided) house and one very large thud which I realize now was a tree hitting our neighbor’s roof. It didn’t take long for the lights to flicker and go off, and it also didn’t take long to realize that this was no ordinary storm.

It wasn’t until recently, after 16 hours without power, that I was able to fire up the computer, check the Washington Post website and learn what hit us. A derecho (de REY cho) is a long-lived, widespread wind storm that rides along a line of thunderstorms. It’s capable of tornado-like destruction, and one of its claims to fame is that it can hold itself together over hundreds of miles.

The derecho that hit us last night formed in Chicago and raced eastward, fed on the record-breaking heat (it was 104 on Friday). The wind was clocked at 80 miles an hour here last night, and the storm left three million people without power.

Like any blizzard, tornado or major weather event,  this one made me  realize how slender are the threads that connect us to the routine, modern life we live. We were lucky. We lost one tree and a large hunk of another, but neither hit our house or cars. Our gas stove meant I could make a cup of tea this morning, too. But with no power, little communication (phone service was disrupted),  downed power lines making driving difficult, and 100 degree heat barreling down on us once again, the day took on a survivalist tone.

I sit now in the stillness after the derecho, thrilling to the sound of the refrigerator’s hum.

May Showers

May Showers

Comments 0 Comment

We woke to a green world this morning. Days of rain have freshened our lawn and trees, have sprouted weeds, have scrubbed the air clean of pollen and delivered back to us a pristine place we have to look twice to recognize.

What to make of this sodden, soggy terrain? It is no trouble for us, with our paved roads and our close-and-lock windows. With our non-leaking roofs. We are free to muse on the weather rather than fight it. Though there have been torrents in the past, flooded roads and parking lots, wet basements and water damage — these were not our fate this time around.

It was hard not to appreciate this rain, even the thunderstorm last evening that topped it off.  I can hear the flip of wings as birds bathe in green springs that will be gone by noon.

April was short on showers. May is making up for them.

Rain in Isolation

Rain in Isolation

Comments 0 Comment

One aspect of living here that I’ve never minded is our sunny climate.  I don’t know the statistics, but the D.C. area is the brightest place I’ve ever lived. Which means I appreciate the rainy days when they come.

Today’s patter sounds like the rain in white noise machines. It has the same rhythm and pitch, the same levels of splatter. It is, then, a model spring shower. Made to order for the annuals I just settled in the ground yesterday.

I enjoy today’s rain only because it is the exception not the rule, though. There are places in this world I could never live because rain is the rule, not the exception. I’m thinking of Ireland.

Here is Heinrich Boll in his slender 1967 volume “Irish Journal,” writing about the weather of the country to which he says he is “too attached”:

“The rain here is absolute, magnificent, and frightening. To call this rain bad weather is as inappropriate as to call scorching sunshine fine weather. You can call this rain bad weather, but it is not. It is simply weather. …”

Rain in isolation does not drain the spirit. It excuses one from outside labors. It opens up the book, turns the page, settles the pen in the hand. Sometimes it even inspires.

Frozen Fog

Frozen Fog

Comments 1 comment


Out this morning early to move one car and help scrape another, I skittered over the icy driveway and marveled at the cold fog that envelops our neighborhood. It looks like frozen fog to me, but then I wondered, is there such a thing?

There is, I learned, but we don’t have it this morning. Frozen fog appears only in very cold conditions (minus 40 degrees) or in very rare ones (with 100 percent humidity and very quick freezing). I also learned that in the western United States early settlers called this ice fog pogonip, a variation of the Shosone word for cloud.

I will keep calling it frozen fog, though. I like the alliteration — and the crow-cawing loneliness of the scene outside my window. I am also most grateful that I don’t have to go out in it this morning. Frozen fog is best viewed from inside.

Photo from an earlier, snowier winter.

First Flakes

First Flakes

Comments 1 comment


They were barely more than specks in the sky when Copper and I stepped out for our walk yesterday. Bits of fluff from an errant dryer vent, I thought at first, or airborne ash from a fire. I didn’t know that snow was coming. I should have. All morning the earth had that gray stillness it does before the weather changes, a pause, a turning from one element to another.

As we walked, snowflakes dotted Copper’s shaggy back. This would make a good picture, I said to myself several times — and every time I did he did his little doggie shake and they would all be gone.

When we came inside, I still thought the snow shower was a fleeting one. But it flurried the rest of the day and left us with a thin coating, our first of the season. In winter, the world looks better in white.

Summer in Fall

Summer in Fall

Comments 0 Comment


Wet windy weather is moving in today, weather more in keeping with the season. So in honor of balmy blue November skies, of leaf-scented raking days, of shorts in winter, here is photo of skating in short sleeves, a celebration of summer in fall.

Permission

Permission

Comments 0 Comment


A cloudy morning grants permission. Not that one needs it, of course. We are all grownups here (well, almost). We go out or stay in as we are moved to do.

Still, a cloudy morning says, no need to venture out just yet. You will miss nothing by sitting here just a moment longer with the laptop, tapping a few more words onto the screen, reading another passage, closing the book and pondering a phrase.

A cloudy morning diffuses the light. No rays blare from the east. No shadows fall. The clouds are democratic; they spread light evenly across the land.

There is something in the work-worn soul that craves a cloudy Friday morning. It is a long sigh, a pause, a resting place.

Snowtober

Snowtober

Comments 0 Comment


The name isn’t mine but I can’t think of a better one for a snowy October day, one of the few we’ve ever had in northern Virginia this early in the, well, we can’t really call it winter, can we? This early in the season — that’s better.

In honor of our snowy day, here’s a photo from the vault. With fond hopes that this is not the beginning of a hard winter to come.