Stormy, stormy night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Real time wind map around Hawaii 8/7/2014
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-154.05,19.04,889
Hurricanes in the Pacific are Typhoons, I think. That is how I always understood it anyway.
Having experienced giant destructive typhoons and furniture rattling earthquakes I couldn't wait to experience a hurricane. The early stages of a typhoon was the only thing that could get my poorly constructed box kite to fly. My dad came out to the playground area behind our house, grabbed me by my arm and dragged me home berating me and insulting my intelligence the whole way. He was an imposing scary dude in his uniform. The next day surveying damage he pointed out a red terra cotta roof tile dug into our yard and instructed me to pull it out. I could not pull it out. He said. "That could have been your head, you dumb ass." Then when I did experience a hurricane, I thought, "Hey, that's the same thing!" And I couldn't wait to experience a flood. When I did experience a flood I couldn't wait to experience hail. When I did experience hail I couldn't wait to experience a giant immobilizing snow storm. When I did experience a giant city-stopping immobilizing snow storm that you could dig tunnels through and ski off your roof I couldn't wait to experience a tornado and when I did experience a tornado they came in a group of seven tornados all at once, and finally I said to myself, "That will do."
Severe weather events are deeply personal things.
I gave up on the idea of riding an avalanche. Seems I had a misunderstanding of those. But the idea lingered much longer than it should have. And now that I think of it, I gave up on wanting to experience a tsunami too once I saw the photos of parking meters in Honolulu all lined up and bent in the same direction. I had an immature misunderstanding of those as well. I figured I could ride the wave and swim. I didn't account for all the debris slamming around.
I don't have a point.
I'm only saying that for all the millions of dollars of damage, for the lives lost, the destruction of property, the hard-won things lost, the hopes and dreams dashed, the struggle to regain footing, the plight of recovery, a kid does not think of those things. To a kid who does not understand larger things, with no understanding of physics, nor of economies, unfazed by adult concerns, and protected by grown ups a good scary storm is a thrill of a lifetime.
16 comments:
You gave up? I never figured you for a quitter.
Ride that Avalanche! We have a good, young team this year.
I have been through many hurricanes, the first I remember was Hazel in '54.
Last bad one, locally, was Fran in '96.
But we have plenty of tornadoes, ice storms, wind storms and so on to provide weather excitement and tree sawing opportunities.
The comedian Ron White spoke on the issue of riding out hurricanes, saying...
I thought of that painting too. Nice work Chip.
I don't have a point.
I disagree with that statement, entirely.
Thank you for a wonderful blog post.
It made my day.
Hurricanes never bother me. While most of Houston panicked about Rita, we actually drove counter the evacuation back into Houston to ride it out.
Ike was a bit of a concern, but primarily because people learned the wrong lessons from Rita and were slow to release businesses close to the coast. The problem with Rita was everyone tried to leave Houston, even people greater than 15 miles from the coast line. Hurricanes are bad for the coast, but 3 miles in and you just need to worry about the tall trees and poor street drainage. Power loss will be wide spread, and its good to take a vacation to ease city services, but when hotels 20 miles inland evacuate, problems occur.
However, Hawaii is a bunch of islands. There is certainly safe haven in the mountains but recovery after the storm may be difficult.
I was like that as a kid, and I'm still a kid. When it comes down hard here, I like to hike up into the mountains to see the rivers surge and wipe their way through the canyons. We do love to see destruction, especially in action.
Other than a little rain?, this hurricane is a big nothing burger.
I love thunderstorms even though I know that they can bring destructive fires with the lightening strikes.
The heat before the storm becomes more and more oppressive. The humidity builds up weighing you down. Huge thunderheads start to build up over the surrounding mountains. Then.....the storm breaks and you can see the lightening strikes spectacularly streaking across the sky and down into the mountains, forests, and rocky peaks. If the storm moves over us directly it is impressive amounts of rain, hail and wind.
After....the temperatures and humidity have dropped. The air smells clean, fresh and cool. What a relief. Just pray that there are no fires.
When we traveled in the Midwest, when I was a child to visit family, the relief after a storm was wonderful. The ominous look of the thunderheads, the dark overhead and the glow out on the horizon where the sun was still shinning and the frightening tornado activity, seeing the funnel clouds beginning to form and some actually touching the ground as we were driving across Kansas, was something that I will never forget.
Nature is beautiful, powerful and unforgiving. Never forget that.
Genius vs Oaf
Van Gogh saw swirls
Saw the flowing stream;
Whereas I, looking at the night sky
Say, "Who's for ice cream?"
I could not understand what the BFD was about earthquakes. So what if all the buildings crumble. Get out of them and watch the destruction. That is honestly what I thought. I also visualized the ground cracking open right under my feet and me making a quick decision about which side to jump. What's the problem? Just decide and jump. And if you fall in, then hang onto the side while it's shaking. Then climb out. No biggie. No worse than a ride at Disneyland. That's how I imagined things.
What a fucking idiot.
I also thought you could jump straight out sideways from a racing car or off a train and not be hurt by forward momentum. That once you left the moving vehicle you are in your own space independent of the vehicle and it becomes instantly like a jump off a wall or a jump from a stationary car. I could not visualize nor imagine a problem. And all the actors and stunt people doing such things were being melodramatic. Chuh! Talk about overacting.
I hurt myself a lot learning simple things.
I thought I could swing myself high enough and wrap the swing around the cross pole holding the chains. And I tried.
I'd jump from high places imagining I'd land on my feet and that would be that. I had to experience pain in order to be dissuaded.
I loved rolling and sliding down hills, unaware there could be rocks and sticks and other unexpected obstructions that could kill me. And if I bumped into them, so what, boing, I'd bounce off.
And that's why my parents kept asking me emphatically, "WHY did you do that?" And my only answer was a timid, "I don't know." Then they ridiculed my one good answer. My only answer. By repeating it in an high pitched voice modulating up and down goofy-sounding voice, "I~I~I~I do~o~o~o~n't kno~o~o~o~o~o~w."
If I had the vocabulary at the time I could have answered more clearly, "Well you see, I am but eight years old and unfamiliar with basic principles of physics, only just beginning to familiarize myself through trial and error such fundamentals as momentum, angular motion, conservation of energy, gravity, tensile strength of bones, anatomy, elastic collision, speed and mass and such. I am only learning that healing isn't magic. That all things do not heal instantly. That mechanical things are harder and different from organic things. I do not understand death. That's why."
Of course living on the Big Island just after a hurricane might create an opportunity to recover windfall koa. Mmm, koa...
After Hurricane Andrew hit Homestead Florida an enterprising wood guy collected 8 tons of Cuban mahogany that had been blown down. That's not quite enough an incentive to make me want to live in Florida, but it's close.
I can see it now "Florida Man Saws Wood!"
Oh yeah, I'd be famous.
"I also thought you could jump straight out sideways from a racing car or off a train and not be hurt by forward momentum"
I used to think that too, although I never tried to put it in practice.
Myself, I used to love floods - on TV - as a kid. How cool to be in a car, that floats - or being able to flag down a boat while sitting on your roof. So what if things got a little wet in the house?
The real problem with Earthquakes is the ruptured gas/water/whatever mains and and the fires that sometimes result. Besides the property damage. Its fire that leveled 1906 SF - not the earthquake.
I grew up in tornado country. I have seen them and had nightmares about them. What I didn't realise until I had experienced three hurricanes, Fredric, Elena, and Hugo, that hurricanes have tornadoes inside of them.
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