first storm of the season

10.18.2007

first storm of the season

We are hunkering down, getting ready for the first storm of the season, expecting heavy heavy rains and SE winds of 35 mph with gusts up to 60, which put us into official National Weather Service "High Wind Warning" status. I've got the wood stove going -- much to the dismay of the resident yellow jackets -- and an apple pie in the oven. We do not, alas, have our storm windows up yet. Last spring I paid someone to trespass onto my neighbor's (uninhabited) land and cut off 2/3 of the overgrown pear tree that that sits windward of our home. If it falls now, it will block the driveway, but miss the house.

Since we have lived here, we have had a chicken coop blown to bits and watched the neighbor's under-construction barn fall to the ground, twice. When we have wind, we have serious wind.

I've always loved storms, and I am trying very hard to embrace storm coziness today, but I am slipping into melancholy as Dad's injury last winter was on the night of the Great Storm (an extratropical cyclone, actually) last year. The idea of him lying in the cold rain for all those hours breaks my heart.

The Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006, as it is officially called by the National Weather Service, killed 15 people and "blew down thousands of trees, knocked power out to close to 1.5 million customers, damaged hundreds of structures and homes, and injured dozens of people. 275 people were treated in hospitals for carbon monoxide poisoning [we saw most of these folks piling up in the hallways of Harborview Medical Center: multiple people per gurney] following the storm."

As the rest of our region was watching the winds pummel their homes, we were awaiting news of Dad, getting the news, not believing the news, and crying a lot. I drove my Mom home in the middle of the night. The world outside matched our private inside world that night: torn up, frightened tumultuous, exhausting, weeping.

During a lull in the wind the next day, they life-flighted Dad to Harborview, our regional trauma center. We drove down to sit with him and were there until Boxing Day.

Storms will probably never be the same for me again.