BackPage: A WEATHER SPECIAL

A WEATHER SPECIAL

By Rob DelGaudio
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One summer afternoon we had, assuming the typical law of averages, one of those once-in-a-generation climatic events – an invasion of weather typically suited to the Plains states – rows of tornadoes. They first blew into Springfield, then swooped east across the Connecticut river valley and into Massachusetts through Sturbridge, Worcester (which last saw weather like this in the mid 1950’s), then hooked south towards Milford and Bellingham before finally petering out as it dashed towards Walpole and Braintree.

The high winds and classic funnel clouds were formed sporadically on the southwestern edge of the passing “thunderhead cells” – a menacing meteorological term the nattily dressed weather guys were fond of tossing off. It transformed the less threatening “thunderstorm” into something in keeping with the times – fanatical forces bent upon hell fury and maximum destruction. I can only assume Homeland Security was alerted. The newscasters certainly did intone a sense of impending hostility and dire consequences if proper measures were not taken.

On a large electronic map behind a young TV-weather stud, irrefutable splotches of yellow and red marched ever eastward with each Doppler sweep, signaling imminent wreckage and mayhem for the hapless towns in their path. The northern flank of the splotches’ took aim at my town, Hopkinton. All it would take is bit of shifting air currents and whammo, our bucolic hollow could be ground-zero in a pitched battle with the unruly forces of nature.

Such a possibility might be the reasoning for the late-arriving, reverse-911 call from our town’s emergency response nerve center, which I’m sure bristles with the latest hi-tech, tip-of-the-spear gadgetry procured through the marvels of pork-barrel politics in a spare-no-expense effort to insure local citizens are instantly alerted to things they have no control over. My sources tell me an intense, pressure-filled debate usually occurs at Bill’s Pizza with the Chief, his key captains, and one or two representatives of the town council, while they wait for an extra-large pepperoni before deciding on the final wording of the call. The one with the most garbled annunciation is then chosen to record the message. Bill’s must have been doing a brisk business, or they had trouble correcting the split infinitives and dangling modifiers, because by the time the call came through it would have been better phrased as an apology or a congrats for having endured the storm. The Chief’s message had all the urgency of a lethargic announcement for a delay in the trash pick-up schedule. It’s times like these that make you realize for all our advancements in communications we were better off with the old air-raid sirens mounted atop city hall – now that was a warning. They never failed to get your attention and lent a dash of the Blitz to any event.

Just like the breathless TV weather forecasters.

One weatherman expertly analyzed the bold video graphic, repeatedly noting the tell-tale “hook” shape which denoted the potential presence of sinister conical winds lurking within. The display area looked more like a protruding rectangle to me, less threatening and somewhat clunky – quite unlike the ominously swirling graphics used for hurricanes and Nor’easters, visuals which scream havoc and mayhem. Yet his demeanor contradicted the benign visual aid, his breast-pocket handkerchief nearly popping from his suit coat as he lurched about and advised those in the splotch-path to “Get inside immediately!! Stay away from windows!! Get in to your basement right now!!” Was he expecting funnel or mushroom-shaped clouds?

On another channel, an older, white-haired, paunch-bellied weather hand could barely contain his excitement – this could be a career-defining weather day – Tornadoes! In Massachusetts! On My Watch!! He had explicit visual-aids – 3D video models of “thunderhead cells”, and obviously a better graphics budget than the competing channel. Lightening bolts danced around inside their cloud models, which towered up Godzilla-like over the hapless New England country side. He marveled at the forces at work – updrafts, down currents, colliding columns of air, hail the size of watermelons. On one chart, hundreds of tiny lightening bolt symbols overlapped one another, each denoting a single lightening strike (someone was counting?!). They looked like Nazi SS symbols. Thousands of them, an invading horde of doom which with every sweep of the Doppler blew steadily eastward.

Outside, the real world suggested the TV-men’s dire warnings might be right. The distant artillery-like booming of thunder signaled the advancing front.

The sky had darkened in a foreboding way which silenced the birds and sent the cats burrowing into fortified, nearly inaccessible nooks and crannies of the house. Humans used to posses this kind of instinctive intelligence. Now we must be electronically prodded from our digitally induced stupor or seek the obvious answers via Google.

I surveyed the yard for vulnerabilities. Could the ten-pound sledgehammer pose a threat? According to Google, recent tornados in the Midwest had lofted cars and farm equipment. What about my half-constructed fountain? Its centerpiece was an 800-pound, wing-shaped slab of bluestone tapered at one end to a lethal point. Could I be held liable if it end up wiping out my neighbor’s kitchen? (Google thinks possibly yes). A recently delivered pile of gravel could end up machine-gunning the front half of my house, should I get to work on sand bag emplacements? No wonder the TV weather hands warned of staying away from windows. Mom nature was sure to be armed and dangerous.

By 6 PM the evidence and eye-witness accounts were rolling in to the TV stations – whipping winds, whirling funnels, flying debris, uprooted trees, smashed cars, flattened buildings, and accounts of the ubiquitous “freight train” sound which oddly accompanies all cataclysmic events (except train derailments which are often reported to sound like jet planes taking off overhead). Its more likely the sound caused by restricted blood vessels in the frontal lobe as the human body recoils in anticipation of death or extensive bodily injury caused by painful, blunt trauma.

The young weatherman urged extraordinary caution, advising the vulnerable masses to barricade themselves in their basements. He also suggested “leaving the TV on with the volume up loud” so his urgent and dire predictions could penetrate through the floor joists and freight train wind howling into damp, musty cellars across the area. The situation had obviously inflated his sense of self-worth. Or perhaps it was finally the opportunity to realize one of his long-held fantasies – the notion of his voice booming out at rock-concert volumes in homes throughout the region with a vital, up-to-the-minute, Accu-weather forecast. Couldn’t we just wait for the all’s-clear call from the Chief?

But despite the Doppler splotch’s direct hit, the dire warnings, and the pleading weatherman’s calls to run, duck, and cover, Hopkinton had to that point experienced nothing but a bit of heavy rain, faint flashes of lightening, and the typical mid-summer’s claps of thunder. Tornado-Shnornado. The cool-looking, dark clouds and eerie lighting had given way to the usual flat, dull gray of a rain storm. As always, the excitement was happening elsewhere. We didn’t even loose power.

By nightfall I had tired of the TV weather hyperbole and decided to return to the comforting glow of my laptop screen. As I pecked away at a proposal, I eventually noticed what seemed to be horizontal lightening flashes and the increasing cadence of thunder. I’d been trying to get a decent audio recording of thunder for a number of years. The best, and seemingly loudest ones, tend to occur in the middle of the night – those which startle you from a deep, alpha-state of sleep to near cardiac arrest when a lone, crackling explosion of thunder strikes out of nowhere. But by the time any recording gear is operating the massive, close-by strikes are done and the storm is a series of distant rumbles. Other times I’ve heard the thunder approaching, stumbled out of bed, gotten the equipment running and waited, waited, waited, for what ends up being a no-show storm and a few wimpy claps. This time it would be different.

The recording gear was already out and pre-set – I’d been after an owl’s hoots for a few months – and I was wide awake. In a minute the red “record” light was blinking and I was outside beneath the overhang of the front stoop pointing my “shotgun” mic towards the heavens. The stoop was perfectly sheltered from the wind, yet open to allow the collection of a good stereo image of the rolling, echoing sounds. The rain was falling fast and furious in what seemed to be meaty dollops capable of carving dimples in the nearby walkway. I tucked myself back up against the house, into a corner by the front door, and tried to remain as still as possible. It wasn’t easy.

The storm was like nothing I can recall. The higher altitude lightening flashes were continuous – like a relentless strobe-show at a Spanish disco. Lower, and more ominous, were the nasty bolts, some of which were indeed traveling sideways. Piercing spikes of lightening were streaking down everywhere, some so close it seemed the roar preceded the flash. I imagined the plight of soldiers during World War I, crouched in muddy trenches, while the shells rained down endlessly – or a shipwreck survivor clinging to a chunk of flotsam while the sea and a fierce storm raged. I was only an arm’s length away from the relative safety of our house’s interior, yet I felt as vulnerable and exposed as if I was lashed to the top of radio tower in Kansas.

It was like I’d been elevated mercilessly into the center of one of those towering “thunderhead cells” depicted by the weathermen’s 3D models. Lightening was careening in every direction. The thunder, its clarity and directionality amplified by the mic and headphones, produced a range of spine-tingling audio textures and volumes that heightened the reality and conducted a humbling sense of the forces at work. It screamed of a lethality capable of tearing your head off (or at the very least ripping your eardrums out and singeing your eyebrows). I could literally hear the sizzle of the lightening as it passed by, emphasizing its searing power to obliterate anything in its path – particularly a knuckleheaded humanoid clutching an aluminum mic boom-pole. Would I hear the bolt that strikes me? Would it sound like an approaching freight train? Would I be rendered to nothing but a charred blotch on our granite stoop, or blown through a gaping hole in the wall behind me – which I could feel vibrating with each ground-shaking thunder blow.

I became aware that I had one foot atop a rubber door mat and instantly shifted the other over onto its protective powers. Saved! By the $5.99 doormat from K-mart! Simultaneously I took note of all the surrounding metal objects – the storm door I was partially leaning against, the nearby basketball hoop attached to a 12 foot high pipe, the brass bell just above my head, the gutter downspout – Brilliant! I was like the little arm that sticks out from a TV satellite dish where all the energy is focused. BOOM!

A bolt that likely hit somewhere behind the house had me nearly leap through the glass of the front door. A complete sneak attack. Lightening is energy. Our brainwaves are energy. Can lightening think? Does it seek and destroy? Does it hunt down prey? Why did I not heed the weatherman’s stern warnings to “Stay Indoors!”? I should be in the basement with the TV volume cranked up to 11 paying attention to his sage advice, not standing outside with a metal pole in my hand and having my ears shattered by home-obliterating lightening strikes.

I contemplated the move required to get inside. It would involve stepping toward the open air, away from the shelter of the stoop’s overhang, and yanking open the highly conductive, aluminum alloy door. It represented crossing an ultra-exposed no-man’s land. The lightening was still flashing and flying every which way. Would my movements stir the unseen charged particles of matter around me, displacing previously balanced negative and positive polarities, and thereby igniting a chain reaction of complex sub-atomic events that would, at the speed of light, bring down a megajoule of lightening wrath onto my front step? Could my charred splotch stain be removed with bleach and water or would it require renting a power washer?

More importantly, had I been able to get a decent recording, something which might do the fury justice and rationalize my presence well beyond the safety of the basement? You’ll have to be the judge. But give it listen on something besides the chintzy ½” speakers of you laptop, or the cheapo ear buds that you got for free. And think of me defying the on-camera sages and tempting Thor from my front stoop, aluminum boom pole in hand.