Borrowed Weather
Nov. 22nd, 2006 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluWe're having someone else's fall. Possibly several someones. All of the usual weather patterns are in a complete rumpus. Seattle fall is normally pretty predictable: grey, cool weather with regular doses of light, drizzly rain, with occasional sunbreaks.
Instead, September and October were uncommonly mild, dry, and sunny -- Sunshine for days at a time! In October! -- and then November came in not merely wet, but with a record month's worth of rain by the ides, and did not stop raining then. But even then, whole days of sunshine. On weekends, even. And very weirdly, mild, warm days when it was clear. That is just wrong. Once the winter cycle sets in, the one thing you can set your clock by around here is that if the skies are clear at night, it will be bitterly cold. (You! You Minnesotans! Get up off the floor! Stop laughing!)
And this onslaught of Pacific storms comes riding along on that rarest Seattle wonder -- wind, and lots of it. And with the wind, change. By the minute change, sometimes. Tuesday began gray as a galvanized trash can, with the horses of Neptune chasing each other along the south side of the bridges where the ketch fetched up. By midmorning it was too bright out to leave the shades up in the south-facing windows -- the winter sun rides just over the top of Smith hall, streaming in over the quad past the bare cherry branches. By afternoon the squall lines were chasing each other through the campus, threatening to turn into hail, and just for punctuation, a thunderstorm passed overhead, seemingly starting all at once, right over us. By evening it had gone cold again, and I cursed the optimism which prompted me to leave my scarf and gloves at home because the weatherman promised rain. It rained all right. Near freezing bloody rain. Someone has broken our weatherometer.
Instead, September and October were uncommonly mild, dry, and sunny -- Sunshine for days at a time! In October! -- and then November came in not merely wet, but with a record month's worth of rain by the ides, and did not stop raining then. But even then, whole days of sunshine. On weekends, even. And very weirdly, mild, warm days when it was clear. That is just wrong. Once the winter cycle sets in, the one thing you can set your clock by around here is that if the skies are clear at night, it will be bitterly cold. (You! You Minnesotans! Get up off the floor! Stop laughing!)
And this onslaught of Pacific storms comes riding along on that rarest Seattle wonder -- wind, and lots of it. And with the wind, change. By the minute change, sometimes. Tuesday began gray as a galvanized trash can, with the horses of Neptune chasing each other along the south side of the bridges where the ketch fetched up. By midmorning it was too bright out to leave the shades up in the south-facing windows -- the winter sun rides just over the top of Smith hall, streaming in over the quad past the bare cherry branches. By afternoon the squall lines were chasing each other through the campus, threatening to turn into hail, and just for punctuation, a thunderstorm passed overhead, seemingly starting all at once, right over us. By evening it had gone cold again, and I cursed the optimism which prompted me to leave my scarf and gloves at home because the weatherman promised rain. It rained all right. Near freezing bloody rain. Someone has broken our weatherometer.
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