March 21st, 2008
It’s the standard line about weather in Seattle (”the Intermittent Windshield Wiper Capitol of the World”). Don’t like it? Wait ten minutes. Like a city bus in some fantasy world, new weather will supposedly materialize on schedule.
Today was definitely a wait ten minutes day. An hour or so on the road was like watching TV with an obsessive channel flipper. Light clouds, heavy clouds, mist, drizzle, buckets, rainbows!, sunshine and finally a light dust of snow near my destination.
Still waiting for blue ice, oobleck, frogs and pink lizards.
True weather story: Years ago in the southern California desert on a baking, cloudless summer afternoon we were lounging, somnolent around the kitchen table trying to avoid any heat-producing activity. Simultaneously and for no apparent reason we all rose from our chairs as if the atmosphere had bunched itself under our feet and pushed up. Outside, the light grew thick, though there were still no clouds and a directionless wind whipped the tree tops. The hair on my arms prickled. I went outside. Up and down the street, people were coming out of their houses and looking around. The tension grew oppressive and it became a struggle to breathe. Suddenly, electricity arced between two high tension lines overhead. The blinding violet arc traveled along the lines for a moment accompanied by an earsplitting buzz, until it finally snapped and power went out for miles around. The tension immediately evaporated and everyone exhaled.
The memory of this storm was the germ behind the lyrics to my song, Monsoon.
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March 24th, 2008 at 6:24 am
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the story is, “if you don’t like the weather, get in the car and drive for five minutes.” We have the “Bay Area Micro-climates.”
We live along the coast in the sea-side hamlet of Pacifica. Everybody believes that it’s foggy in Pacifica 24 / 7 / 365, and that’s a misconception we tend to perpetuate in self defense. “Yep. that’s the clime in Pacifica. Miserable all year!” We even have a Fog Fest.
After living for 20 years in the Mojave desert, cool and moist is the right answer as far as our skin is concerned. And if we get tired of it, we drive for five minutes to Brisbane, where it’s almost never foggy. If we start missing summers in southern California, we can drive out to Pleasanton.