I have had a fascination with the weather since I was a child growing up off of Lake Erie in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.  Lakes Erie and Ontario are the smallest of the five Great Lakes, but they are still large enough to essentially be small inland freshwater oceans.  As such, they generate their own weather, just like any large body of water does.

Where I lived close to the Detroit River south of the city, which drains into Lake Erie further south, this meant very dynamic and occasionally volatile weather that resulted in blizzards, heat waves, severe thunderstorms, and even tornadoes.  These storms both fascinated and frightened me, and I wanted to know more about them.

My first foray into the world of meteorology came in the form of some free booklets that I wrote away for: one for tornadoes, and one for hurricanes, even though that wasn’t something I had to worry about.  I was interested, they were free, and my mother was always more than willing to oblige my insatiable curiosity.

After devouring the booklets and reading them over and over again in obsessive fascination, I wasn’t quite as afraid of storms, although I would pester my mother as to whether there were any tornadoes.  This was the late 1970s, and the max warning time of only three minutes for tornadoes came in the form of sirens and the Emergency Broadcast System.  It may as well have been the dark ages from a meteorological standpoint.

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes were not my first brush with severe weather in the Detroit area, however.  That came in the winter of 1977 with what was referred to for years afterward as simply “The Great Blizzard”.  We lived in a second-story apartment, and as the storm blew in, I watched as more than three feet of snow fell in mere hours, bringing the entire Upper Midwest to a standstill for at least a week.

When I was 9, we moved away from Detroit and went to Houston where there were more jobs.  I traded blizzards for hurricanes and incessant deadly heat in the summer, and kept the severe storms and tornadoes.  In fact, the latter got worse due to the higher temperatures in Houston and the proximity of the larger Gulf of Mexico, which generates more atmospheric convection that leads to thunderstorm formation.

I only thought the storms in Detroit were scary, but I had merely moved from the cooler northern end of Tornado Alley to the warmer, more violent southern end.  The Houston storms generated thunder that absolutely pounded across the sky, following the gigantic streaks of deadly lightning.  I didn’t mind an average coastal thunderstorm, they were impressive displays of natural power.  The more severe ones, however, could generate hurricane-force straight line winds even before spitting out a tornado, taking out the power for days.

In 1983 at the end of May, a storm system rolled in overnight.  The noise of the thunder woke me up, and my mother came in to gather me into the bathroom just as I was opening my bedroom door.  The lightning flashed so brightly and frequently that I could have read a book from the light coming in my window.  We huddled there in the dark bathroom, waiting for the multiple cells to pass, listening as the roof tiles were torn off the apartment building.

The next morning, the sun was shining, and we all emerged from our homes to survey the damage.  The parking lot was strewn with debris.  Several apartments had broken windows.  The power had been out since the storm rolled through, and it would stay out for another week in 90F+ temps and 95% humidity.

That would not be 1983’s only meteorological punch.  In August, Hurricane Alicia churned through the Gulf of Mexico, making a beeline for the Texas coast.  Only being 11 years old, I was unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation, but I was excited at having a hurricane to track on my tracking map.  I dutifully listened to the weather twice a day to get my updated coordinates from the hurricane hunters based in Miami, FL at the National Hurricane Center.

My excitement grew as the storm grew closer to shore and the weather forecasters told everyone to prepare.  We did not live on the coast, so we would not bear the full brunt of landfall the way the island of Galveston would, but we were only 75 miles from landfall, and the eyewall was headed directly over our part of the northern city suburbs.

My mother had me sleep in the dining room away from windows, which turned out to be a good idea.  There was a sliding glass door in my bedroom, and she walked by it just in time to see the glass bulging, at which point she hurriedly opened the door to release the pressure of the wind on the door.  At some point, the eye passed overhead and the winds calmed for about half an hour, then the storm began again with the winds coming from the opposite direction, but with no less force.

Once again, an encounter with severe weather did not make me more afraid of it, but less afraid, and hungry to know more about it.  I became obsessed with meteorology, insisting on watching the news each night to see the weather forecast.  My mother cultivated this interest, telling me everything she knew about storms, which only fueled my interest.  I even flagged down a local meteorologist at a gas station and asked him for his autograph.

After living in Houston for 10 years, I moved 180 miles inland to the city of Austin, located in the Texas Hill Country just east of the Balcones Escarpment.  I would learn a lot about microclimate living in Austin due to its unique topography.  It sits at the intersection of three major biospheres, all with completely unique characteristics from the ground to the sky.

The aforementioned Balcones (‘balcony’) Escarpment drastically changes the nature of storms headed for Austin from the west.  Austinites know well the pain during a drought of watching an incoming storm evaporate the instant it hits the elevation change from the Hill Country down into the city.  Meanwhile, cities to the north and south without that elevation change get hammered with severe storms, flash floods, and tornadoes.

Sometimes the Escarpment would act as a funnel, though.  If the atmospheric flow was from the southwest, paralleling the Escarpment, then a phenomenon known as “training” could occur, in which the center of low pressure would spit out one storm cell after another heading northeast in a “train” of thunderstorms that would pound the city one after another.  Rainfall amounts in excess of 12” in 24 hours were not uncommon during these events, resulting in deadly flash flooding across all of Central Texas.

Moving to Austin did not spare me from the onslaught of tropical storms and hurricanes.  More than once, the phenomenon of hurricanes dumping huge amounts of moisture overnight while inland caused major flooding in Austin and surrounding areas.  Moving to Austin also exposed me once again to severe winter weather, usually in the form of ice storms.  In December 2001, I studied for my finals by candlelight after the power went out during a freak ice storm.  We kept tropical fish at the time, and we lost several due to the temperature drop in their tank.

For the most part, I enjoyed the storms in Austin.  Sometimes they were severe enough to warrant some caution, but most of the time, it was a wonderful spectacle to behold that very frequently brought welcome cloud cover, coolness, and rain in a place that endures searing heat for at least three months of every year.

Then climate change began to set in, and in 2020, it was clear that the sky was broken.  I observed long-standing weather patterns, such as jet stream flow, become disrupted at a fundamental level, destroying the ability to render accurate long-term forecasts and allowing for the formation of abnormal weather systems in places where they should not exist, such as blizzards in central Texas.  These were not one-off events, either: they were happening annually.

In 2022, my family and I moved from the heat of Texas to the cool rain of the Pacific Northwest.  Living here has been a revelation in many ways, not the least of which is the weather.  Due to our latitude of 44N, nearly halfway between the Equator and the North Pole, we have seasons of equal length, as opposed to where I was living at 30N (the same latitude as Cairo, Egypt), where summer could seriously last for six months and winter would be a no-show (except for a power-killing blizzard).

The temperate climate here is maintained by the constant cool temperatures of the North Pacific, over which the prevailing west winds blow.  Save for occasional hot spells caused by high pressure bubbles, this keeps us pleasantly warm in the summer and largely above-freezing in winter.  With the exception of springtime and late summer, there is not enough heat or moisture in the atmosphere to allow for the kind of convection that leads to thunderstorms.  Severe weather typically comes in the form of winter flooding, ice storms, and snowstorms.

The equal seasons are a blessing for my mental health.  I feel a harmonious peace with the natural cycles of this place.  I know that each season will last about three months, give or take, and that helps me endure any unpleasantness I might experience from the weather, which typically only happens in summer.  Despite the fact that summer is not nearly as hot as it was in Texas, the long days and bright light are overwhelming to my system.  I actually need darkness in order to thrive, much like certain cactuses that only bloom in the darkness of winter.

In fact, fall and winter are my two favorite seasons.  Fall is a delightful reprieve from the intense sunlight of summer, which transforms into something more gentle to accompany the colors of the trees.  Not only am I grateful summer is over, I am enjoying autumn for everything that it has to offer and looking forward to winter.  I carry most of this energy with me into winter, relishing the cold, wet, gray yet still looking forward to spring, which is more beautiful than I imagined when we first planned to come here.

I still have much to learn about the weather here.  Texans have the same joke everyone does about waiting five minutes if you don’t like the weather, but that goes triple here.  I only thought Texas weather was wacky.  Pacific Northwest weather is incredibly dynamic and alive, to the point of unpredictability.  Since moving here, I have abandoned my lifelong habit of checking the weather twice a day (or more), because it’s nearly irrelevant.  I check my phone to see what the day’s high is supposed to be, and then add five degrees out of experience.  I use my eyes and my nose to tell me if it’s going to rain: living only 60 miles from the Pacific Ocean as the raven flies means that the smell of the Sea is unmistakable as weather systems move in.

I bought myself a book about Pacific Northwest weather a few years ago, but I have yet to read it.  I think I should indulge the curiosity of my inner child and finally read it so that I can get to know the Sky in this beautiful land a bit better.  When the sun and clouds are just right, it looks like Maxfield Parrish himself painted the Sky in puffy shades of pink, yellow, gold, and orange.  There could be no better place for me to be now, where I can express my love of the Sky.