The weather. There, I said it.
Everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. I get it. What can we do? And no, this is not another column about global warming, greenhouse gases, climate change, or polar vortex storms. Although let’s be logical, many people consider global warming a serious or very serious issue. Possible societal responses to global warming include mitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, and future climate engineering.
Maybe Al Gore was right when he wrote, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. But after inventing the Internet, it seems to me he has his full of other issues.
And maybe the president is correct. Afterall he has been tweeting about if for years.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·We should be focused on magnificently clean and healthy air and not distracted by the expensive hoax that is global warming!
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·It’s freezing outside, where the hell is “global warming”??
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air – not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!
I’m originally from New York. It’s cold. It’s hot. When it rains, it rains, everywhere.
Living in South Florida for the past twenty-five years, you would think by this point, I’d understand how the tropics work. For instance, it rains here every day in the summer. They call it the Atlantic hurricane season, which is the period in a year when hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean. We also have tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic which are hurricanes, tropical storms, or tropical depressions.
But I don’t understand. I looked out the window on Monday and I saw the sun. I then turned on The Weather Channel. They were doing a show on storm chasers which looked interesting, but I was just waiting until it was time for the local weather.
I left the storm chasers heading for a cyclone as they broke for a commercial and local weather. There were pictures of clouds, sun, and a % next to both. From what I could see, it would rain heavily, but not until 4:00 PM. I looked at my watch. 1:35.
I walked to the front door.“I can go out and as long as I’m back in two hours. I’m golden, with time to spare.”
I put on my sneakers, number 30 sunscreen, and New York Yankees baseball hat. I headed north on Federal Highway, watching the gray skies overhead.
“Hmmm,” I thought. “Only in Florida are there blue skies on the left and the right and black clouds overhead. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I should go back. But if I go back, I know it will clear up. The Weather Channel and the Doppler radar just told me to go out and as long as I’m back by 3:30 no need to worry. Why would they lie to me?”
“Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!”
By 2:10 I’m a mile into my walk and the sky is as black as coal.
“Turn around,” the voice in my head says. “That Doppler radar must cost about six billion dollars. It just looks awful. Keep going. It’s Florida. It’s summer. It’ll rain at most for five minutes and back to sun.”
By 2:30 it might as well have been midnight. I am two miles into the walk and ten minutes from Walmart, the nearest place to take shelter.
At 2:40, I run, in my drenched socks and sneakers into the store with several others, all feeling the cool breeze of air conditioning blowing on us as if we were in igloos.
I looked back and heard the thunder rumble and boom as the rain pattered against the glass doors.
The people who walked in with me reached for carts and headed into the store to shop. Those people on the way out to their cars are trapped as the thunder cracks louder.
I look at my watch: 2:43.
“You lied,” I mumbled to a woman with a baby and several bags of groceries in her cart, causing her to wheel it towards the far end of the store exit. “Why would you lie to me?”
By 3:10, seeing blue sky to the east, I believed it was letting up. Inching my way closer to the door, I thought, “The hell with this. It’s practically finished.”
I was about to walk close enough to the electric eye of the doors and escape my nightmare until a blast of thunder followed by a bolt of lightning lit up the black sky in front of me, causing oohs and ahs from the shoppers and store employees watching around me.
By 3:30, the sky had turned the lightest shade of gray it had been in the past hour. The thunder passed and seemed to have taken the lightning with it. The rain was still coming down, but with the thunder gone, I was going for it. Besides, all the people trapped with me had exited to their cars.
But I was the only one walking two miles.
I plan on writing a letter to The Weather Channel suggesting they tweak the Doppler. For that kind of money, I think they should be more accurate than the toss of a coin.
The good news? I was home by 4:00. The skies were blue; the sun was golden, and my pockets were so full of water, I checked for frogs.