Posts tagged ‘weather’
DISASTER IN REAL-TIME
In my novel, The Beast Awaits, I try to convey the atmosphere of impending doom which exits for populations thousands of mile away from the initial incident. As with everything I write it needs editing. I find that even to be true with work I have published. The process never stops. I recently had an experience which brought to mind the atmosphere I tried to create. I must go back and see if I can now find better words.
The incident I am referring to is the recent rash of tornadoes our country has experienced. I’ve always been a weather junkie and during the tornado outbreak I tuned to the Weather Channel. The meteorologists were following the storms in real-time, analyzing the radar and issuing warnings. A strange feeling crept over me as they recorded evidence of debris circulating in the air picked up by the tornado. These debris clouds were people’s lives being changed forever, perhaps the people themselves being destroyed, all as it actually happened.
Occasionally they would have people on the ground right after the storm passed and, together with the residents, survey the damage left behind. I sat in the comfort of my family room watching up to the minute changes in people’s lives.
In The Beast Awaits, I deal with events such as this and the emotions they create, the ‘I’m glad it’s not me’ feeling and try to convey the atmosphere that ‘your turn is coming soon’.
Car accidents also come to mind, how everyone slows down to survey the damage, mostly I’m sure glad with the ‘glad it’s not me’ feeling. In The Beast Awaits that emotion is short-lived, for just down the road will be your turn.
MY MIND AT WORK
As my readers know by now, I’m a news junkie. But that is not the only type of junkie I’m guilty of being, no there are no track marks involved. I’m also a weather junkie.
Long before the weather channel morphed into broadcasting weather related series and documentaries, it was all weather 24/7. I would watch the weather channel for hours, back then. Now, I rarely tune in.
I’ve lived in and visited a great deal of this county. I enjoy knowing the weather in those locations so I can picture what the area looks like under the current weather conditions. Also, there are places I have yet to visit but I’m drawn to their weather. On a winter’s day, look up the weather in Fairbanks, Alaska. I see their weather and imagine how life is and endurance test compared to the weather conditions I experience. My imagination grows muscles in pursuits such as this and that can only help a writer.
So what brings me to this piece?
As I sit here the sky is blue and the sun is out. Tomorrow it will start to rain and then snow. By Monday night we may have twelve inches of the white stuff. This will be about our thirteenth storm of varying size this winter. (Read my poem, Snow https://walttriznastories.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/snow/, at this point and then please return.)
Currently California, after a prolonged drought, is being deluged causing mud slides, and also causing growth which will provide fuel for fires which will set up mud slides etc… As Kurt V. would muse: And so it goes.
I know a great deal of this moisture will eventually find its way back to the ocean from where it came, but there’s a hell of a lot of water that stays behind, water absorbed by the parched earth and coursing into rivers.
I should mention at this point that one of my novels I am currently editing and hope to publish, The Beast Awaits, has a significant weather component.
Now back to this piece.
Global warming, or the term becoming more popular, climate change, is responsible for melting vast amounts of ice, at both poles along with a host of other historically ice-bound areas. Due to this melting, we’re told that the level of the oceans will rise so many inches in so many years.
At the same time, storms seem to becoming larger and more numerous, think Hurricane Sandy and Katrina.
I wonder if anyone has done the math correlating the increasing storm activity and the vast amount of moisture involved against the rise in sea level due to melting ice. As a side note, I see all kinds of plots here perhaps worthy of a story.
That leads me to genetics. See how my mind works.
I read an article some time ago where a question was posed: Is the evolution of man still taking place? The answer was: Yes, and at an increasing rate. How is that possible? Advances in our knowledge make it possible.
Think of the advances in medicine and our genetics. To an increasing extent our abilities are cancelling out the natural law of Survival of the Fittest.
Consider the progress made by medicine and genetics where flaws in man can be cured or deleted. But who determines what a ‘flaw’ is? That is the rub and as we gain more and more knowledge in the control of these aspects will determine the course of our future.
For those who have read this far, I’m about to tie this all together.
Look in the mirror. That’s what ties it all together. We tie it all together. We have a profound influence on the weather. A growing body of knowledge examines human activity and how it relates to climate change along with an awareness of how to alter our activities to slow that influence. But here’s a reality check: How can billions of us exist of this beloved rock and not cause a change? Sure, we can perhaps slow it, first we have to believe it, but change is inevitable. This planet has undergone fantastic change in its history without our help, now those changes are increasing with our input.
Same thing with evolution. We evolved along the bumpy road of time, but now with our hand in the mix and with our increasing control, who knows what lies ahead.
SNOW
I thought I’d revisit a poem I wrote and shared on my blog some three years ago.
Our last two winters were nearly nonexistent, but now we are paying. We had three snowfalls in less than a week and another inch is predicted for tomorrow. They have all been small amounts but they do add up, as does the love of snow in this poem.
This poem was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Bells.
THE SNOW
See the delicate snowflakes fall,
Falling, falling, falling.
Whitening the earth, awaiting below,
Falling, falling, falling.
See the mounds of glittering white,
Building, building, building.
As they hide the ground from sight,
Building, building, building.
See the ceaseless falling snow,
Falling, falling, falling.
Will it stop, no one quite knows,
Falling, falling, falling.
See the drifts accumulate,
Building, building, building.
My longing for spring will no longer wait,
Building, building, building.
SEE THE DAMNED WHITE BLANKET GROW,
HIDING, HIDING, HIDING.
MY CAR, MY LAWN, ALL I KNOW,
HIDING, HIDING, HIDING.
SEE MY MADNESS, MY URGE TO KILL,
GROWING, GROWING, GROWING,
CROSS MY PATH, AND I’LL DO YOU ILL,
SMILING, SMILING, SMILING.
WALT’S OBSERVATIONS
WALT’S OBSERVATIONS
ON THE WEATHER
TORNADOES
I cannot comprehend the destruction tornadoes have brought to this country the last few days.
I have spent years in the Midwest, attending college in Oklahoma and stationed, during my air force experience, in Wichita. While in Wichita I was once close to a tornado but never witnessed it. It was on a spring afternoon and the sky filled with storm clouds. They grew denser and the bottom edges were edged in green. While out looking at the sky, the wind howled and then stopped. The temperature dropped, the wind returned, this time accompanied by huge hailstones. Miles away a tornado was reported.
The only place I witnessed a tornado, and I saw a few, was while living in Miami, Florida. From the lab window where I worked, I had a clear view of the ocean and twice observed water spouts. And then one Saturday afternoon I was fishing with friends in the Everglades when a line of storms approached from the north. We decided to return to Miami, and as we were driving, I could see a delicate black finger, in the distance, descend from the clouds. That was the only land tornado I witnessed and never did reach the ground before dissolving back into the clouds.
But in the last few days communities in the west and south have witnessed the destruction of this force first-hand, and many did not live to tell the tale. We have all seen the images, but I feel that unless you see the massive amount of destruction first-hand, you have no appreciation of the force of a tornado, and are truly unable to comprehend to impact on the communities involved.
How do you prepare for the destructive force of a tornado?
As a snow storm approaches, as we are accustomed to here in the east, you have days to prepare. There is the traditional raid on grocery stores for eggs, bread and milk. (Perhaps in some future piece I will discuss why I think we do this.) Then there are the camera crews stalking the hardware stores as people rush to buy snow shovels and salt. Just as an aside, one newscaster comment, “How many shovels do people need?” For with the approach of every snow storm, snow shovels sell out.
We have the same advanced warning in the case of hurricanes. The vastness of the impact cannot be fully predicted, as with Katrina, you know for days that a storm is approaching. Sometimes, however, human error adds to the magnitude of the loss, take Katrina for example. With the approach of a hurricane, the news is full of people boarding up window and leaving town, at least those that can.
But what do you do when a tornado outbreak is predicted? With today’s technology, we have warning, perhaps a day in advance, that tornados my appear over a vast area. Not until these vast machines of destruction are truly set into motion does one truly know where the danger exits. There is no way to protect your house and belongings. It is useless for the destructive forces are so haphazard.
Do you run?
You may be leaving a safe haven only to enter death’s door. You can only wait, take what cover you can, while this traveling fiend does its devil’s dance across the landscape, sparing one home and destroying the house next door.
I know all our hearts go out to those having experienced the recent mayhem. Wish them well in their recovery. Time will heal the landscape and erase the physical carnage. Hopefully, time will eventually soften the loss and experience of those affected.
Walttriznastories's Blog 