Category Archives: Weather

California Dreaming

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Sunset at the Oasis

We made it home late last night. Although with our body clocks still being on Pacific time, it did not seem so late to us. We left the Left Coast amid sprinkles but landed here in the Lou after a deluge. The all-day rain had ended, but only just when we caught our Uber home. On the way home, we had to drive through standing water, but arriving safely home, we discovered that our basement was still dry. Welcome back to the Midwest!

We changed planes in Denver, where we were greeted by a former coworker, who was on our flight home. He was returning from working in Seattle. I quickly got all caught up on my former workplace’s news. We flew Southwest to Monterey and back, where bags fly free. It was an odd airline choice since we had just bought and brought with us on this trip new carryon bags. But what is really odd about Southwest is its boarding process.

Instead of getting a boarding pass with a seat assignment, you get a boarding pass with a line assignment. Before each flight everyone lines up in the order that they have been assigned. When boarding actually begins, everyone is free to choose any free seat that is still available. There is no first-class section at the front of the plane, like on other airlines. Line assignments can be purchased, but most people “check-in” 24 hours in advance to get in line. 

This boarding/seat assignment process is the most egalitarian one in the industry. Which is probably why the elitist NYT has targeted it for change. Their recent article on the subject took aim at the profitability of this method. I mean Southwest is missing out on selling all of those premium priced tickets. On our last flight home, we sat in the third row. On any other airline it would take a million frequent flyer points to get that seat. Our seats weren’t without some baggage though. We ended up sitting behind a grandmother and her two young grandsons. The youngest one end up screaming for most of the flight.

One more oddity occurred during boarding. We lined up right behind a young woman, who was the same woman who we had lined up right behind on the flight out of California. The fashion statement of the day was made by another woman who was wearing a sweatshirt that said, “In Airplane Mode.”

Lavender

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Lavender

The house here in Monterey is like a chimney. Built on the side of a hill, it cascades down the steep hillside towards the bay. Above the house is its road and across this road is Carmel Valley. This chimney’s flue is the house’s open floorplan that runs from the downstairs bedrooms to the upstairs master bedroom suite. We are sleeping downstairs, where it is always cold, especially in the morning. This morning, we got a little rain, to cool it further. Just, enough to baptize a fairy, but why one would want to baptize some pagan spirit is beyond me.

As the sun rises and warms the day, the master bedroom sucks up most of the heat that the house receives. It actually gets hot there by afternoon, which is the time we usually gather there to watch TV. The downstairs warms slightly during this time, but still remains cool even through the heat of the summer and offers the semblance of air conditioning down there. It is still only spring here, with lows in the forties. In the relatively dry California air, things cool off rapidly after sundown, only to repeat this cycle with little variation the next day.

The weather in Monterey changes little throughout the year. Most days have highs in the sixties and lows in the fifties. The highs sometimes get a little higher in the summer and lows a little lower in the winter, but day-to-day temperatures changes little. It changes more with locale than it does with the season. It is always cooler by the coast and warmer inland. There is more fog than rain at this time of year. The fog brings moisture that the plants need. It also obscures the view, but usually burns off by noon. That in a nutshell is the weather here.

Spring Day—Stormy Night

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Anne on Our Walk

Yesterday, was unseasonably warm, with temperatures in the eighties. This warm weather spawned evening thunderstorms, tornado warnings, hail and flash flooding. Sirens sounded, our phones wailed warnings and we ate dinner with phones, wallets and keys in our pockets. We put our shoes on our feet again, ready to run to the basement. The TV was broadcasting storm updates, which we kept on, while we dined. I do not think that there were any tornado touchdowns, but there were plenty of hooked clouds. Bad weather raged most of the night, at least until three. By then the weather had begun to subside and Anne’s alarm went off, to wake her from a sleepless night to work the polls today.

Stormy Weather

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Gale Warning Flags

Superior may have the Gales of November, but where we are staying, near Boston, gales seem to be an everyday occurrence. For us, their winds blow in from the sea, up Broad Sound, across Revere Beach, over Rumney Marsh, then inland and upland to us. Here, high above the sea, the wind whistles through the still bare branches that shake all night long. One gale has already passed this week, and another is due tomorrow.

Interestingly, this last gale was accompanied by a red flag fire warning, with high winds, dry air and little rain, conditions were ripe for fire. Do not go to sea in a small boat. If you do so, be sure not to smoke or be careless with matches. 

Closer to home, storms of ill health continue to rage. So much so, that we have decided to curtail this trip. We will not be going to DC. We will not see the cherry blossoms. And we will not be able to straighten out Congress. Not this week. Instead, with tail tucked between our legs, we will beat feet back home.

Category 7

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Johnny, Susie J Lee, 2013

Johnny, an oil worker in the fracking fields of North Dakota, was asked to sit quietly for a video portrait, a portion of which is seen here. Sitting for thirty minutes, the video can be uncomfortable to watch, but once the awkwardness has passed, the image creates an awareness of a shared humanity.

Our trip to the Gulf, with its attendant oil and gas industry was eye opening. Its breath of scale was more than I had been prepared for. Oil has always been king in Texas, but fracking has renewed its reign. On our drives to and fro along the Gulf, I was a gaga over the size of this industry. Mile after mile, for hundreds of miles, the pancake flat landscape was punctuated with oil derricks, pumping stations, and the fiery towers of flaring refineries. No global warming here. No climate change to worry about either. Nothing to see here. Just move along down the road. Who cares if it turns eighty degrees in February?

One of the forecasted results of climate change are storms of increased severity. Currently, the Saffir-Simpson scale for measuring the intensity of hurricanes only goes up to five. Any storm with winds over 252 Kph is a class 5 hurricane. Some storms with significantly stronger windspeeds have been informally classified as six. In the future though stronger storms may broach category 7.

Thirty years ago, science fiction writer John Barnes hypothesized such storms in his novel Mother of Storms. In this book an environmental catastrophe unleased rapid global warming. Huge storms were precipitated. Storms powerful enough to scour Florida clean. We are not there yet, but we are headed in that direction.

Snow Patterns

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Snow Patterns, Don Coen, 2010

Yesterday, a surprised snowstorm struck. It was forecasted, but not for as much snow as we got. Besides these forecasts are usually an exercise in covering your ass anyway. When we went to gyro it was 37 ºF and sleeting. After class I went to the grocery store. After coming out again, it was snowing with some gusto. The temperature had dropped some, but it was still above freezing. It had begun to stick on the pavement, so I bagged the rest of my errands and headed home. It snowed constantly throughout the day, sometimes heavily. In the end, we got about five inches. Then the mercury dropped out the bottom. In the middle of the night, I got up to elevate the thermostat, for fear of freezing our newly fixed and not yet paid for plumbing. A few days ago, it was in the mid-sixties and in a few days hence they will be again. Making this dip just a blip.