Every Storm is Different

It's May; spring storms are many, but I've learned from my up-close-and-personal point of view about how very differently nature cooks up each storm, no two alike. This one started overhead, with cumuli. Others approach from a distance, gray as a dull knife blade, on the western horizon. That usually means a storm lasting one day. Blue-gray means a thunderstorm, much more intense. South-western horizon, the very dark gray looks bad on radar but often peters out before it gets to foothill country. North-western horizon, cold, spattering rain. Greenish-gray, very serious conditions are approaching; unplug electronics, batten hatches. A storm coming into this part of Missouri from the east is very unnatural, usually the backlash of a Gulf or southern hurricane, and the wild animals get frantic.

Look Through My Window

The cabin's original windows with original silica glass (single-pane, and it's wavy) look like this, a little scarred, but it's been 80 years and only two are left and there's no greater fun than yanking them open in good weather, yanking hard and maybe even prying with a butter knife, and letting the breeze in to sweeten the room, and thought I'd show you the view in summer:

And just so you don't get too romantic about living in a 1930s log cabin in autumn during a rainstorm:

The leaking problem is largely solved by a piece of thick translucent plastic Demetrius stretched into a wooden frame he custom-built to fit this window from the outside, a homemade storm window, but in the summer I remove it. In autumn when the window leaks--as the weather and precip is increasingly driven in from the north--I set the shield back over the window. Then I must seal every crack in the inside with those rubbery strips of foam or else cold wind whistles through the warpings. Yet it's all worth it. These have to be the coolest, strangest windows on earth.

Yes, these windows should all be repaired and maintained, but the owners don't think the house is worth maintaining. That used to annoy me until I realized what I treasure isn't the INSIDE of the house but the hundred acres it sits on and all comes with it. In the Manhattan penthouse I will someday inhabit, I will never look back on my life and be sorry.

The Afterglow

Toward sunset on a simmering-hot day, a day or two ago, a storm came. According to radar it was a big 'un. Violent. So I put on shoes, rounded up my purse and crucial belongings such as earrings, phone and charger, and hid in the the only room without windows, the bathroom. (Cabin is built on a concrete slab, no basement.) Yet the storm just skirted here and didn't even knock the power out. So I crept out and saw, in the east where the storm was heading, the strangest orange sky. Glowing orange with a touch of gray. Tried photographing it, to capture the color. And in the photograph I saw a ring thing (lens glare, I thought). I looked up higher in the actual sky and saw layered onto this eerie orange background, a rainbow. From hearing reports, I learned it was seen all over the area.

Why It's Called Hail

Exactly on cue, on April 1 it thunderstormed like crazy. The next day, 100 of us were at a meeting listening to a speaker through shattering bashes of thunder when a strange sudden sound came from the roof. It intensified. Then someone near a window said "Hail." We all groaned because nature, without a care as to who could afford the deductible and who couldn't, was wreaking hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage on our cars and we couldn't do squat about it. Politely waiting until the speaker finished, we then looked outside, marveled, and I photographed the hailstones for everyone who'd need to file an insurance claim.

I wondered why frozen rain is called "hail." As we know, in English "hail" can also mean "greet," "flag down," or "salute," and that particular "hail" is from Old Scandinavian--but "hail" meaning "frozen rain" is from Old English "haegl" from the Old German "Hagel," derived God knows how from a Greek word meaning "pebble," and there's a chance it's from a Sanskrit root meaning "cold."

Water from the Sky

The storm introduced itself with a gust of wind of the kind that snaps trees and sends logs flying through the air. Earth-quaking thunder passed over. The electrical power shorted out at 11 p.m. Soon the violent part of the storm was over. My device's battery ran down and, with nothing else to do in the pitch darkness, I went to to bed wondering what I'd see outside in the morning.

The pump is electric, so the only water was in the pipes and there wasn't much. I had filled pans with water as the storm approached, and had also put in a few gallons' supply, but these bottles past their expiration date tasted chemical, so I used it only for washing. Made a cup of tea. All things, including my life, felt like luxuries. Going outside I saw downed branches but nothing serious; my fragile tomato plants were undamaged. In fact all plants sang with happiness because they'd been rained on. With great curiosity I approached the rain gauge and was amazed and grateful to see a full two and a half inches. So ended the hottest and most dreadful stretch of drought here since the Dust Bowl days.

For a while I tried recharging my device through my car battery to check the electric company's outage map, but soon ran low on gasoline. I couldn't work on the computer so I took a walk and saw a swollen, muddy LaBarque where there had been only a thin nagging trickle. I then swept leaves from my porch, broke down boxes for recycling in the garage, and had my first full day outdoors for many weeks; the storm cooled the air from the 100s to the 90s. As it got too warm I went into town to an air-conditioned hair salon to get a haircut I'd been putting off.

Just as the day was beginning to be not so wonderful, when after 16 hours without electricity I started to think about the spoiling food and useless toilet, the electric power resumed and everything indoors sang too.