Uncommon Weather

I’m sitting here in my home “office” listening to the cold February rain fall through the boughs and branches of sweet gum trees and Southern pines before it dashes itself to death on my metal roof. The sound is like static with all the sharp edges filed off. It is white noise of the very best kind. It makes me want to make a cup of hot tea, wrap myself in a blanket in a comfy chair and while away the afternoon reading a good book.

            Or, I could turn off all the lights here in the “office,” tuck myself under the electric blankie and with only the light from the screen of my laptop write about the exceptional nature of this particular rain. Even the weather in my life is uncommon. But, then again, so is yours only, maybe you don’t know it…yet. Never fear my little witches, Aunty Selene is here to point out the singular spectacular uniqueness in all our lives.

            So for the last four or five days the weather men on the local ABC station have been doing a rain dance. It has looked particularly uncomfortable for them; first they jig this way then they jog that way. Back and forth it’s gone. They looked as if their meteorological prognostications were making them very anxious. They sweated, staining the underarms of their shirts and ruining the done-for-TV makeup. In short, they looked like small children caught in the midst of a lie. It has not been pleasant to watch. The reasons for their discomfort are remarkably clear…but you have to be “from around here” to understand.

            Snow in Alabama is not really snow. There is no powdery white stuff with which to make snowmen or lie down in and flap your arms and legs to make snow angels. No, gentle readers, Alabama snow is granular because it’s halfway to being an ice pellet to begin with. All of us who live here know that those of you who live north of us laugh because education and commerce come to a halt after a half inch of what is technically “snow” only because it fell from the sky that way. Once it came to rest on Alabama soil, it became ice. No, none of us own tire chains and even if we did, we wouldn't know what to do with them. So, sooner or later but probably sooner, the whole “snow” day will become an “ice” day, at least on the roads. What might seem humorous from way up there becomes deadly pretty damn quick down here. We don’t want our children riding on buses to and from school in these conditions and we don’t want to try to drive to our jobs either. We know we don’t know how to drive on snow but no one can drive on ice. That’s why the forecast is so important to us and to the meteorologists! Get it a little wrong and people could end up hurt or dead because they went out not expecting “winter weather.”

            Before I go further, I must tell you that the particular team to which I refer is as expert as they come. They are incredibly knowledgeable, proficient, and IMHO, the best in the business. Their senior meteorologist seems to know the name of every community and small county road in Central Alabama. He is a most beloved figure in our part of the state. I go to no other source for weather information when the weather here turns ugly which is pretty damned often. Though most of the rest of the nation doesn't realize it, those of us who live here know that Alabama lies firmly in Tornado Alley. Put your faith in some greenhorn of a weatherman and you might get to find out that Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton’s experience in the eye of an F5 was a Hollywood lie. While this post may be having a bit of teasing fun at the expense of these gifted men and women, make no mistake, Aunty Selene respects and appreciates this incredible team of professionals.

            I also should say that, like growing up with guns, growing up with tornadoes every spring seems so normal to me. Yes, I have seen a few from pretty close up and four years ago, the town that I call “home” was ravaged by a monstrous tornado. Forty-two people here died. And on that day, just before the power went out for us, I was watching the senior meteorologist on my local ABC asking anyone who had loved ones in our town to call them, contact them in some way, and tell them that something bad was walking into our town. For all of us to take shelter. While he didn't say it, I thought about the old Native American warning from the tribes who made the Midwest of what would become the United States their home. The warning was, “If you see the dead man walking in the sky, you will be the next to die.” We know now they were referring to multiple vortices tornadoes that spawn what can appear to be “arms” and “legs” that rotate within the core of the main tornado. The footage from the last large tornado in Jarrell, TX was just such a monster. If anyone can find the footage, I’d love to see it again.

Still, I find tornadoes beautiful in an awful sort of way. It is so unnatural, so uncommon, to watch the sky turn green and feel everything around you go utterly still, as if the World is holding its very breath. Then to see on the horizon, if you’re lucky no closer than that, the lightning begin to flicker almost constantly. And finally, to see the terrible magnificence of the clouds forming of themselves a spinning, churning vortex, like the finger of God/dess pointing down at the Earth. It never fails to remind me that I am only one small, young crone in a vast Universe not fully understood by any of us. Being reminded of this fact helps me to access my humility and to harbor hope. Life is still a mystery and as long as there is mystery, there is hope.

            But, I digress.

            The meteorologists have been doing their version of what I call the Snow Hoedown. It’s a plucky little dance that someone should set to fiddle music. It concerns itself with concepts like, is it going to snow? How much? Where? Is it just gonna snow or is it going to be one of those ice storms (God/dess deliver us from the ice storms)? Late last week it began, the Snow Hoedown, I mean. The “s” word was mentioned during the evening weather forecast along with much caution about not panicking, it was, they said, still too early to tell. By Saturday, the Conventional Wisdom was that North Alabama—think NASA Space and Rocket Center—would receive the “worst” of the snow and that we here in central Alabama—Roll Tide!—would experience sleet and freezing rain. There was the unspoken but very real possibility of the dreaded (cue the melodramatic scary music—dun,dun,dduunn) ice storm! The two other newscasters and the sports dude looked aghast at their weather brother whose tie suddenly seemed too tight. Now it was no longer a question of “if” but “when” the run on the grocery stores would begin.

            The only thing more dangerous than a snow and ice storm in Alabama is the run on the grocery stores. You take your life in your hands just driving to the store. Inside it’s like Black Friday just before the stampede gets started and the blood starts to flow. It is, in fact, one of the reasons our weather people are very careful about mentioning the “s” word (snow) or the “I” word (ice). There are people in this state very willing to get into cars during the worst of it or during the middle of the night and make an early run on the grocery store. They are usually the lousiest of drivers yet, somehow, always seem to make it back home unscathed.

            There are three things the majority of Alabamians buy when sleet, snow, or (shudder) ice is mentioned in a forecast: bread, milk and eggs. That’s it. Bread, milk and eggs. They don’t clean out the canned goods section, there will always be plenty of batteries left and the produce section will be largely ignored. But the bread shelves, milk refrigerators and cooled egg cases will be empty. If you listened hard enough you would be able to hear the sighing sound of empty Arctic tundra in these areas of the grocery stores. No, there won’t be any more “in the back” if you ask store employees. Don’t even think about going to the convenience stores, they were the first to be emptied out. At the convenience stores there is a fourth item usually on the snow day grocery list---beer. I could not make this shit up.

            When I got older, because I am a troublemaker, I began to ask why. Why bread, milk and eggs? Why? Nobody had a good answer. The only thing that comes readily to my mind that requires those three ingredients is…..French toast. Was everybody in on some secret French toast conspiracy that I was ignorant of? If we all must eat French toast on snow days or risk a fate worse than death, why have I not been made aware of this? If you live in Alabama and fail to eat French toast when snowed and/or iced in do you turn into something awful? Do you become (shudder, shudder) a non-Southerner if you fail to prepare and eat said delicacy? “Ye ain’t from around here, are ye boy?” (echo, echo) Why was I not told!? This could be serious!

            For one, brief, mad second the meteorologist put up a graphic of the state which I have named, The Bread Graphic, TBG for short. It was a map of the state divided into sections each section labeled with the number of loaves of bread that people needed to buy at the store. We were in the two loaf area. Seriously, I am not making this up; I wish I was. Even the professionals are in on the bread/milk/egg conspiracy whatever it’s about!

            I know, my little witches, you all want to know if Aunty Selene caved? Did I dash to the store and for reasons I don’t understand buy the Holy Trifecta of food? Did I finally learn what larger conspiracy might be going on among us on snow days? Did I solve said mystery from the safety of circle, Tarot cards clenched tightly in my hand while the snow and/or sleet and/or ice fell from the depths of a lowered February sky?

            No, no. Aunty Selene did not, in fact, visit any store even though we are currently out of bread, have only powdered milk (which we use for cooking but have not yet learned to tolerate the taste of with our cereal), and are down to two eggs in the carton. Why, Aunty Selene? Why not indulge the little voice inside your head that whispers, “Milk, eggs, bread. Milk, eggs, bread. Buy and be fed; don’t and be dead. Milk, eggs, bread.” Because my little witches, that whole rush to the store is lemming behavior!  Besides, that whole chant thing I was hearing was in my mother’s voice so I knew it wasn't really Wiccan nor could it have been something left over from some previous incarnation. It was and is pure foolishness. There is no French toast conspiracy in Alabama (I can’t speak for the rest of the country on this one but there probably is no French toast conspiracy in the whole of the United States either).

            Late in the afternoon yesterday, there was a weather update on the local ABC website. It seemed the whole system had reconciled itself to staying tucked far to the North of Central Alabama. We would only experience “cold rain.” In February, the rain is always cold so, no biggie. And so, here I sit, telling the story of the uncommon rain that is whispering its way through my life right this moment. I am snug under the electric blanket, writing this post and thinking about the incredible number of micro-changes that must’ve occurred for us to move from snow/ice to “just cold rain.” I am grateful for those uncommon changes, grateful for the cold rain, grateful for the singular sound of the rain falling on the metal roof of my uncommon underground home.

While he will probably never read this post or know that I’ve done so, I dedicate this post to James Spann and the rest of the weather and news team at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, AL. You guys are the best in the business. Thank you for your dedication both to the profession of meteorology and to keeping us, the viewers in your market, safe from the literal storms we weather here in West Central Alabama.

BB-Selene