Weathering the Storm
The weather is eerie today.
Not your typical misty gray chill that settles over southeast Michigan this time of year like a thick, unimaginative down blanket, hospital corners tucked tightly in dull practicality, blotting out all traces of the sun and its companion cheerful blue skies for what can seem like months.
No, not quite like that. It’s similar, but somehow different.
The streets of my Ann Arbor neighborhood are still and quiet, with no signs of life save an occasional rain-drenched, dedicated jogger and the annoying preteen corkscrew-blond sisters across the street. These girls astonish me with their insistence on playing outside, loud and shrill, in all manner of blustery conditions that would make a storm chaser think twice about joining them. I suspect their mother finds them easier to manage this way.
The overall vibe feels a bit hung over, as it often does the day after a football Saturday in our maize and blue-blooded college town. This is true whether the Wolverines are playing for a conference title or simply trying to hang on in a once-promising year gone sideways, like this one. Even the squirrels and chipmunks, usually so ubiquitous in their late-autumn quest to sock away hearty food storehouses for the long winter, are nowhere in sight.
We’re under a mighty storm watch here at the moment, with the threat of particularly severe weather – including tornadoes, 50+ mile-per-hour winds, and hail – looming above the region, stretching wide to encompass several other neighboring states. Very unusual for November, as the forecasters and media talking heads are saying.
The rain is coming down in sheets now, sudden and jolting, obscuring my view of the neighbor girls as they run screaming up the three short cement steps to their front porch, where they are sheltered from the deluge. A sharp crack of thunder cuts through the air, startling Lulu awake from her doggie dreams on the floor next to my chair. She bolts to the front door and stares outside, eyes wide and ears raised high in alert.
And, just like that, the rain stops.
It has been like this all day, strange and unsettling, unseasonably warm and unpredictable. The wind is picking up again, its low hum crescendoing into a roar, shaking the spindly branches of the nearly leafless maple tree in the front yard and causing my 1960s-era windows to rattle.
The public radio announcer interrupts Ella Fitzgerald’s My Funny Valentine to tell me the tornado watch 170 miles to the west of here, near Lake Michigan, has become a warning. Touchdown is imminent. I turn up the volume on my streaming smartphone and listen closely, stroking Lulu’s soft ears absently as a way of calming both of us.
I wonder what, if any, surprises the weather will bring this evening. Like so much in life, there is only so much one can do to prepare for inclement conditions, expected or not. I check the batteries in my flashlight and make sure my phone is charged. I take a deep breath and turn my attention inward, watching and waiting, sipping my piping hot tea.