Monday, December 10, 2007

No Clue

We have some bad weather that is coming in today. The forecasters are calling for upwards of an inch of ice in the next 24 hours or so. We are under an ice storm warning.

I was listening to an AM radio station this morning (WIBW, 580 out of Topeka, KS). Their meteorologist was on the air explaining the situation to listeners. He was saying that there is a large area of warm air that has overridden a layer of colder air at the ground. When moisture condenses in the warmer layers and falls, it starts out as rain, but freezes when it goes through the colder lower layer. He also said that in some places, this colder layer of air could be only a hundred or so feet deep.

That’s the part that got me. We could have an inch of ice, power lines down, trees downed, and society totally disrupted by a layer of air that could be only a hundred or so feet deep.

Life is so fragile here. We think we have everything under control, and then we find out something like this. Our efforts to keep warm and comfortable quickly become priority and other things take second fiddle to the more primary things. We tell stories for years after going through something like this, and pat ourselves on the back for being ready and having extra supplies, etc. But in reality, life is at the whim of a hundred feet of cold air.

Who are we, anyway, to think that we have it all together. We don’t have a clue.

1 comment:

Wayne said...

How true! I know its not funny but sometimes I laugh when the forecasters miss the weather just because it always reminds me that with all our "smarts," and we do have a lot to be thankful in that regard, we still can't "control" the weather.

The weather always is a topic of conversation here where we live, as I guess it is most places, but somehow we always need to submit to what comes, not to what has been predicted.

WDK