Although this did not make the news this week...I guess the weather people were more determined to get their teeth around the two bigger bones, the earthquake on Tuesday and the Hurricane eerily bearing the name of my
former mother-in-law...definitely a precursor for what that blowhard was going to dump on us...the brief...very brief snowstorm, about five minutes total, of fluffy flurries swirling in the air, didn't warrant attention.
I can see many of you saying, "No Way!"...she's a writer weaving a story because snow doesn't happen in 90 degree weather. I used to think that way, until a few years back, can't remember exactly how many, five, eight, right in the middle of the Dog Days of Summer, snow swirls danced outside making the summer day a lacy panorama of winter's white.
Guess what? Earthquake on Tuesday, Hurricane on Friday and Lake Effects snow on Wednesday.
How can I possibly know it was Lake Effects snow...well, unless someone popped open a lot of goose-down pillows, the fluttery stuff could not be anything but snow. It was a clear day...no snow clouds, the sun beaming...if my eyes were not deceiving me, and as ancient as I am, I do admit that MIGHT be the case...(not really)...cloudless snow is an anomaly created by the lakes. Back in the day...five, eight years ago, the snow from our Great Lakes all the way out there, found its way here on another August day.
Earthquake on Tuesday...we don't live on a fault line, but felt the radiating temper of a liquefying ground that rose, fell, shook, made the birds go nutsy, and some of us actually felt nauseous before it hit and for days after it's last thrust. (I'll explain why later.)
Lake Effects Snow on Wednesday...okay unusual, but not unheard of, and because we associate snow with COLD, psychologically it gave us a minute respite from the sweltering sauna preceding Hurricane MIL heading for us too.
I've always loved watching snow race or eddy towards the ground...having it fall in August is no less breathtakingly beautiful than it is in December when we all press our noses to the window panes on the twenty fourth, pleading with the powers that be, for a White Christmas.
Friday...the hurricane's promise is such the eastern seaboard declares disaster conditions hours...MANY hours before the MIL storm begins trekking its way towards us.
Weatherpersons in bow ties of raw silk, designer jackets that cost more than I have ever spent in my entire life, animatedly regale that unblinking red camera eye with the deadly destruction we are about to be served on a Doppler platter.
Governors, Mayors, Aldermen call for mandatory evacuations...people run believing the doomsday hype now coming at them minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day...again, long before the first fat drop of MIL's moisture touches the highest of treetops.
We are going to die...if we do not rush to the store, purchase the last of their generators, the last "C" and "D" battery, the last lantern, flashlight, bottle of lamp oil, candles, milk, eggs, bread, and incredibly enough,
Rice Krispie Treats. I kid you not!
The earthquake survived, the Lake Effects Snow hardly noticed, but Hurricane MIL is coming. How can anything sharing the same name as my former MIL be anything but, catastrophic?
Hurricane bands tease us with torrents one moment and mist the next. Winds gust between a scarcely noteworthy twenty miles an hour to a pretty impressive eighty mile an hour wind spurts.
Hurricane MIL has arrived. On the TV our courageous, high paid news people brace themselves out there so we will not for a moment discount it is as serious, as deadly, and as costly as they've been saying since they had to stop the non-stop hurricane hype to hype the earthquake on Tuesday. (Unlike Lake Effects Snow, you can't really miss the ground dipping and rising and shaking all about...Do you think Mother Nature knows the
Hokey Pokey?)
Those of us who felt the pressure of the earthquake's power, were now having that nausea escalated by the approaching demon Hurricane MIL.
Equilibrium...most the time we don't give it a second thought, but with the altering ions preceding MIL, balance comes into play. (Those of us who feel these changes sort of understand why birds go wonky before Nature's fist comes down...because we go wonky too.)
Saturday the storm begins to show us how right, or not, the weather prognosticators have been during this long week of ratcheting descriptions of the hell about to befall.
Generators...fortunes spent to buy up every one from Lowes, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Walmart, and every other supplier of such things. "AA" and "AAA" batteries remain in abundance while shelves for the "C", "D" and those bigger ones that look like they belong in cars, stare back at you from their stark emptiness.
Yes, the MIL dropped a lot of water, and blew the bejeeburs out of some trees. One million people in my state were evacuated, but by the time MIL got here, she'd been downgraded to a pesky category one hurricane.
Now we are hearing about the billions in damages, even though the promised devastation the weather people, you know those silk clad designer tie wearing people, promised with escalating seriousness did not happen.
Those guys continue to make their high salaries, even though more often than not they're wrong...
Kinda reminds me of politicians who claim God sent both the earthquake and hurricane to Washington, D.C. to let politicians know they need to change...
(Hello! I do NOT live in D.C....nor do any of the residents of Canada...Perhaps politicians need to go back and learn a science other than POLITICAL science...and please explain to me if D.C. is so horrid, why do these politicians spend billions on campaigns to get them there?)
But do you think those hurricane numbers reflect the monies wasted by the average and overly frightened Joe buying generators, candles, water, and weird as it sounds Rice Krispie Treats to counter Mother Nature's destructive wrath? Somehow I doubt it!
I begin to think that maybe we should seriously think about relieving these doomsday prognosticators, whittle our own divining sticks and glean the weather all by ourselves. We certainly can't be any less accurate than they are with all their expensive state-of-the-art tools.
And now, on Monday, the tail end of Hurricane MIL is not even a blip on the weather segments of our news. Now we hear over and over how much this storm cost us...meanwhile deep in the lower oceans another tropical depression system is forming...
