Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Blowin' Smoke

 


Monday, Sept. 7, 2020, 1pm.

We're scheduled to have a Wind Event in a few hours, and I'm very excited. It was in the TV forecast (or, as they persist in calling it, the "futurecast," because "fore" just wasn't getting us there fast enough). They also trotted out a helpful Garbage Can Wind Scale, with Level One being a garbage can at rest, and Four being a garbage can gone forever. This event is going to be a Three (look for your can down the block). Level Five is a garbage can twenty feet up a tree, but we don't have those here.

Somebody is paid to think up these things.

We do know a lot about how weather works, because of Science, a lot of which is up in the sky. From the vantage of our satellites, we can see wavy lines called isobars hovering over the map. There are also big H's and L's. The wavy lines are responsible for the wind. If you get a bunch of them bearing down on you drawn in a Sharpie, you're in for a good blow.

It's been a breezy summer already, although much of our wind these days comes from helicopters looking for the BLM march of the day. But I know wind events can get out of hand. We could lose power. I have a freezer packed to the rafters with broccoli and blueberries. There's probably fancier stuff underneath but the broccoberry stratum is mighty thick, and maybe protective. We could have a big jump in wildfires. None are real close to us now but you never know. At least one major fire in California was caused by fireworks from a Gender Reveal Party. (The fetus in question was revealed to be a likely idiot.) Portland is not nearly as fully involved in flames as you might have been led to believe, but stuff happens, and we've been advised to be as nervous as possible.

 

Trees could come down. They've all still got leaves on them, which gives the wavy lines a little more purchase. Dave still remembers the famous local Columbus Day Storm of 1962, a huge sustained wind event, a total Sharpie monster all the way. It wasn't as devastating as it could have been, because electricity hadn't been invented yet, but milk trucks got knocked over and several Fuller Brush men took to the air.

I do know I would not care for an extended Wind Event. The Santa Ana winds are famous for driving people insane, and we don't need any more of that this year. Presumably the winds carry an excess of positive ions and pelt people with them. I remember a wind storm back east that had sustained 80mph winds for four days. I specifically recall that I had to drive my boyfriend's car over a high skinny bridge from Sea Isle City to mainland New Jersey on my way to Virginia. It was a runty little car with the heft of a potato chip. In the middle of the night when I'm reviewing all the ways things can and probably will go wrong, being blown off a bridge into deep water has always been right up there in the rankings.

4:45pm. A few minutes ahead of schedule, the Wind Event has arrived! Doors are slamming everywhere as the house ghosts evacuate. The sun is a cigarette burn in a cardboard sky, and a tall tree is kowtowing toward it. Smoke fingers its way inside and scrapes the throat. It's from a distant wildfire--or a wildfire that was distant a few hours ago.

California is ablaze. The Midwest is underwater. Parts of Africa are blowing away. Methane is soaring out of the thawing tundra. Is there anything that can save us from a fate equal to death? No? All righty then. Buckle up, Thelmas. We're all in this together.

37 comments:

  1. Hours of stinking wind on Monday. It was like being downwind from a dinosaur farting contest.

    There needs to be some way for the Midwest to send all that excess water to the west coast.

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    Replies
    1. All in all, I'll take what we got over what most everyone else gots.

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  2. Got an old friend near Hillsboro who is packed and ready to run. She sent me a picture of what passes for your sky. Not a good color. We get those "events" less often than you do, for which I am grateful. However, the gales of November are coming. Be careful out there!

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  3. Didn't the "gender reveal" used to be called "labor and delivery?"

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    Replies
    1. And really... who at these gender reveal parties actually is even remotely interested in the baby's gender (outside of parents, grandparents, and siblings)? The operative word for them at these events is "party": " Hey, free food and alcohol? Yeah, I'm there! Oh... you're having a baby? How about that."

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    2. Yes it did, Hamanda. You heard the one about not doing fireworks for a gender reveal party--instead, hand everyone a wallet, and if there's a dollar in it, it's a boy, and if there's 72 cents in it, it's a girl.

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    3. So an unemployed man loses a dollar an hour and an unemployed woman only loses 72 cents an hour. Hmmmm.

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    4. And those are only the figures for white baby humans.

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  4. This is climate change in full action. The heat that we have in the ocean is now being sent into the air and the earth is hot and bothered.

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    Replies
    1. Number one consideration for me, voting. As it turns out, the people who might be helpful with climate change are also right on most everything else I care about. And zero of them are Republicans.

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  5. Huge winds in WA and now we’re burning up. We’ve been 2020ed yet again.

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  6. I love this excerpt: (The fetus in question was revealed to be a likely idiot.) Portland is not nearly as fully involved in flames as you might have been led to believe, but stuff happens, and we've been advised to be as nervous as possible. I made the mistake of listening to about 20 minutes of NPR tonight. I had to eat half a carton of ice cream just to calm myself back down. I'd been having a good day. Now my world is sick, drowning and on fire. Love you Murre.

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    Replies
    1. We have been assured by our local Futurecaster that Portland itself is not in the line of fire, so to speak. The smoke from the south rolled back in this evening though. I'm pretty sure I turned off the same NPR show. These days just a bare minimum of news exposure is all we really need.

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    2. The only thing I can stomach on NPR these days is Wait, Wait -- Don't Tell Me. Everything else is too damned depressing, and I already drink more than I should ("Experts" say one drink for women, two for men per day should be the limit. Riiiiggghhtt. Once again, men get more.)

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    3. I get the same reaction to the news. And now I understand my ice cream consumption better. I get so much enlightenment here!

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    4. I heard, several weeks ago (on NPR?), that 2 drinks were too many, even for a man. My doctors have been advising me since the 1980s (that's quite a few primary care physicians) that 0 drinks is best. If only my 17-year-old self had believed that, my undergraduate GPA might not have been so embarrassing - lol.

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    5. The thing is, Cop Car, that I used to take anti-depressants. They are said to harm the liver and made mmje feel dead inside instead of happy. Alcohol also harms the liver, but I feel WAAAAY more better when I partake. QED.

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    6. Yup, the current advice is no more than one drink for anybody. So I do that, and then start counting over.

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    7. I like the way I first read that: "...one drink for *everybody*." Now I'm sorry I went back and read it correctly! I think once I'm outta Oregon (here temporarily, alcohol-free, caring for my folks) and back in Texas, I'll be following your lead, Murr. 'Cepting, I won't be counting.

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  7. From 90 miles to your south - east of Stayton - we fidgeted as fire roared down the Santiam Canyon gobbling up whole towns before pausing about 6 miles away from where We live on the edge of meadowlark nesting grounds. We evacuated around noon on Tues under a raspberry sky, a reflection of the heart of flame, dripping ashy remains of a forestscape now living only in memory. We hope for a chance to return to a house rather than ruins. My hummingbirds still need a quart of syrup a day and someone needs to change the water in the bird baths. And the "pus-filled waste of carbon" has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

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    Replies
    1. East of Stayton! Oh my dear! Where have you landed, Magpiet?

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    2. Are you kidding??!! A Nobel Peace Prize for the Cheeto?? What is the world coming to?

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    3. Friends of friends opened their large house in Salem for us, an act of grace and overwhelming generosity. Saved us sleeping on cots at Fairgrounds. Smoke eased a bit here yesterday and winds are less. There's a heron rookery near Stayton that has probably survived although one wonders about bird lungs dealing with smoke

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    4. River, dinna fash yourself; it's apparently ONE Norwegian legislator -- who is anti-immigration -- who is nominating him. Those crazy Norwegians.

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  8. Love your words. "A sharpie monster" had me chuckling.

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    Replies
    1. That would be a hindsight thing. Sharpies, like electricity, hadn't been invented in 1962.

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  9. I've seen Portland on our TV news quite a bit lately and each time I say to the dishes I'm washing that I hope Murr and Dave are okay, Tater too.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. Bloody boogers this morning, but that might have more to do with the dryness (we're not accustomed to that) than the smoke. We're very fortunate and have many friends who don't know if their houses are still standing.

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  10. Dear Ms. Brewster: love this blog and all the commenters! And to commenter Cop Car: are you the same who comments sometimes on TimeGoesBy.net? If so, love your comments on both blogs!

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  11. Your mastery at telling a story at least makes a Crisis sound hilarious, I Thank You for that!

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