Archive for September 17th, 2003
cerulean
September 17th, 2003
I was up early on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. The weather that day was perfect. I remember hearing someone use the word idyllic. The weather today is reminiscent of that day. This perfectly calm cloudless blue stillness belies the hurricane warning the radio is announcing.
It would be nice weather to be outside, even if I were hammering plywood over the windows of my house. Of course, I would prefer be in a lawn chair around a barbecue grill, but I would settle for building a wall out of sandbags as long as I could be outside. I would really like to experience the change this afternoon as the first signs of the storm begin to appear.
When a baseball player hits a pop-fly way up high above the stadium, just as it crests there comes a moment when the energy propelling it forward and the force of gravity pulling it back to earth are exactly equal and sometimes you can see the ball visibly hang for a moment. That is the wind today. High pressure weather system against high pressure weather system nullifying each other.
This afternoon, says the radio, I can expect winds to pick up to 25 MPH. Tomorrow that could double and thunderstorms and partly cloudy with highs in the mid seventies. Bill Redlin read this weather in a deadpan voice to win nomination for the understatement of the year award. Then he read that the Metro buses and trains would stop running if the winds reach 40 miles per hour.
Filed under: Real Life
