Weathering

Omaha set a record at 1 degree last night. "Hace muy frio." (I'm trying to restart my Spanish study.) I understood my sister's e-mail about their power outages and the farmers' plight when I read this week's Bloomfield Monitor, with Bill Skrivan's story that, after a heavy day of rain, then freezing, they had at least 18" of snow with wind, enough to take down many power poles and lines. And farmers now aren't like my grandparent's or aunt's farm, with those unheated bedrooms and nights of my childhood.
It reminded me of Omaha's 1997 ice storm. According to the National Weather Service, 85% of our trees were damaged, with $60 million for clean-up. Such deadly beauty. The trees and bushes--for that matter, the buildings or anything outdoors--looked like Disney special effects for the Ice Queen, extravagantly encased in tinkling, clattering glass glittering in the cold sunlight. Most side streets were impassable, blocked by fallen trees and limbs, so that I was heartsick viewing the destruction from the bus windows. After clean-up the blocks of ruined trees looked like photos of war zones. Sections of the city were without electricity for over two weeks. All the motels and hotels were full of people from those sections. My apartment complex had no electricity for only three or four days. My Center and grandparental farm background made it simply another novel experience. I have camping gear, including a 10-volt battery lamp and a white gas stove, though I didn't get around to using the stove, leery of fumes. I don't mind eating cold canned goods, whether cream of mushroom soup, creamed corn, or pineapple, a habit since high school; nor did I have to worry about anything in the refrigerator spoiling when the contents would've been colder sitting out. I took those three kerosene lamps I mentioned Mom had always insisted on plus some pillar candles on plates into my bedroom and shut myself in, knowing those would all provide enough heat, especially the lamps with their hot tall glass chimneys. I distrust candles, extinguishing those before I did any sleeping. Had my battery radio, my books, my comforter and quilts, and felt like a kid again, tucked cosily in my bright, warm little box for the siege, however long it took. Mom brought me up to be pragmatically self-reliant, and those childhood experiences left me better prepared than my neighbors, who fled to friends and relatives who had electricity.
Weather is a prime concern here, and I retain my parents' farm backgrounds on the topic, proud as I was of being a townie--from a village of, usually, 150 plus or minus--but, hey, the county seat. The weather not only affected my grandparents and other farming relations but Dad's business, relying as it did on farmers. And in a village the size of Center, we knew all about weather as we listened to the frogs croaking along the Coulee Creek after rains or the blizzard howling a school closing. Consequently, weather consciousness is so ingrained that the Weather Channel is probably my most watched TV channel and the first program I watch in the morning, the last at night, as I track the forecast changes when I've never had to worry about the cattle or the corn or drought or flooded fields or the grain-flattening storms. I suspect I'm much more conscious of the natural world anyway than the cityborn.
For instance, I was thinking about the differences between rain and snow recently. Rain always announces itself overhead, whether a light patter or a drumming downpour; the traffic sounds change as vehicles splash through water. (Traffic sounds act like railroad schedules for me: when I lived in a curve of the Interstate farther west, I knew the time of day by the sound of traffic.) On the other hand, snow is always silent. My roof doesn't tell me anything. I go to sleep and wake to a white world, any sounds like traffic distant, muffled by the snow. Writing about it reminds me of my college English teaching days with Conrad Aiken's famous short story, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," as a 12-year-old boy goes mad, the world increasingly silenced for him by rising drifts of imaginary snow.
The only sound with snow is, of course, the wind. Because I live on the top floor of our building on top of one of Omaha's higher hills--my floor actually was blown away by the 1975 tornado just before I moved here--I certainly know how the wind shifts, cooing or howling around my aerie, and I judge its force by the trees swaying. I do like the Latin names for the winds: the north wind is Boreas, the south Auster, the east Eurus, and the west Zephyr. Boreas brings down the frigid Canadian air, the Alberta Clipper, but Auster brings up most of our warm moisture from the Gulf. Our Great Plains storms result from the two clashing over us, a bit like the Greek gods in Homer, creating havoc below. But that's what keeps us hardy and wary, right? Stay warm.