Weather Underground

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We consider it eternally boring when we talk about the weather. Small talk, what we do when we're trapped with folks we don't care about, Sure is a nice day, isn't it? Snow coming soon. 

In Girl Scouts, we learned all about the clouds, how they can predict what's to come. Mare's tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships carry low sails. The way you can smell rain, or snow about to come. As a child I learned that tornadoes--that scourge of the Midwest--sounded like freight trains, and, living a block away from  the Burlington Northern tracks, shoved my fingers into my ears humid summer nights when heat lightning and distant thunder flashed outside the window, convinced we were going to float up into the clouds, or the walls cave in. In the winter, we would step outside and know immediately: snow was on the way. The light in the morning was lemony, the air smelled crisp had hard edges, the sun, even in a clear sky, always seemed wan.

Seven years ago, we landed in Portland, fleeing one of the coldest winters in the Midwest in memory. In the weeks leading up to the move, school was cancelled not only for snow (there were hip-high heaps of it) but for temperatures plunging far below zero, and windchills that defied description. I have a photograph of the moving truck parked outside the house, barely visible over the snowdrifts. In Portland, meanwhile, everything was green and wet and already blooming: hellebore and edgeworthia, sweetbox scenting the air, and crocuses pushing through mossy soil. 

Three weeks after we landed here, two weeks into school and the new job, Portland was hit with a snowstorm. I laughed then, amazed at how the city was literally paralyzed by what I considered a paltry amount of snow: maybe 8 inches? Schools were closed, and we were trapped in our little house in Ladd's Addition. In my joy of leaving, I had given away all of my winter gear: snowboots and yaktrax and gloves and hats, thinking I would not need them. And every winter since, we've had at least one good snowstorm, shutting the city down for a few days, or a week (there might be three plows int he city of Portland, and I quickly learned that unlike the flat Midwest, snowy and icy hills are treacherous and require a different skill level in driving, and likely snow tires). The boys sled down the little gravel road next to our house; sometimes, we trek to Laurelhurst Park to attempt snowboarding between the trees.

So, it's supposed to snow. J. rolls his eyes, as often these promised snowstorms never materialize, and honestly--we've been told we won't get a snow day as everything is remote. And R. is not interested in my regular updates, reporting from the National Weather Service and Weather Underground. Midwesterners grow up with a fascination for the weather, I think, that folks on the West Coast never really develop. Here, they learn about earthquakes in schools like we learned about tornadoes. But I am ready for any change, anything that would suggest that we aren't living through the same day over and over again. I love weather, love the way the NWS weather discussion changes throughout the day, love knowing where the weather underground weather stations are near me.

This morning when I woke to let the dog out, feed the chickens, the sky was cold, light a pale orange smudge in the east. The neighbor's roof was silver with frost, and long plumes of smoke rose into the sky where crows and a lone pair of Canada geese flew to wherever they spend their daylight hours. Song sparrows picked at the blown out flowers of the autumn clematis that is slowly strangling the snowball bush. On my run, my air puffed out around my head in little white clouds, and when I pulled my mask over my face when someone approached, I immediately went blind as my glasses fogged completely up. When J and I went to walk the dog after lunch, even he commented the light seems pale, though it was sunny and dry. I think I'll believe it if tomorrow it smells like snow. Our breath hung around us, suspended.

Duck, Athena, Lilac and Artemis enjoying a bath in the decimated moonscape that is my yard


Winter sunrise in this eleventy-fifth month of Quarantine


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