We live our lives by the news cycle. It tells us what to think about and worry about, often beyond our local, daily concerns. And sometimes we forget about yesterday’s headliners. If you’re curious about whatever became of actual Hurricane Ian, I can tell you. He’s been hanging around here. Oh, he’s a mere shadow of his former self, becoming just a low-pressure system sitting off the Atlantic coast between New York and Philadelphia. And spinning, and spinning, and spinning. Around here we haven’t seen the sun since last Thursday. The rain has been intermittent, but yesterday it was pretty much all day and he’s set to continue dominating the skies here at least through today. Your typical hurricane, if there is such a thing, just keeps moving until it reaches unpopulated areas and nobody cares any more. This one has been a long-term guest.
With the first few days of lassitudinous rain we had maybe an inch. Rainfall spat and sputtered and sprinkled. Yesterday it began to really come down and as I write this it’s too dark to tell but I can hear it splashing on my windows. The toadstools popping up in the yard are impressive. As has been the wind and below average temperatures. I’m wearing my winter-level protection and dodging raindrops on my morning jogs. Some days I’ve had to delay them for the water. Not too many other people are out taking their exercise, I notice. The Weather Channel’s taken to calling it just a low-pressure system, but we’re on a first-name basis now. Ian is still very much a thing. At the end of “daylight” yesterday the rain gauge read about three inches.
The thing about these “unusual” storms is they’re becoming the norm. Global warming has been affecting us for years now, even as we deny it exists. Our summer around here was very hot and very dry. The dry was okay by me, but the heat prevented any outdoor work or play for a good deal of the time. Days when you’d stay inside and try your hardest not to move. We had maybe one or two days of transitional weather then boom, straight to November. The leaves around here are still mostly green although they’ve been starting to change more readily now that October’s arrived with December in it’s train. Forecasters tell us, like Annie says, the sun will come out tomorrow. Around here we sure hope that’s right. I wonder what else is happening hidden behind the news?
Steve A. Wiggins 