Last week: Hurricane.
This week: Nor'easter. Welcome to
autumn in New England.
I left work Wednesday and drove four towns east to my
afternoon grad class, heading through an intense snow squall that stopped
twenty minutes after it began. By the
time I arrived in Salem, it wasn't even raining, just sort of misting. Rather surprising since the coast was,
according to the online radar, experiencing heavy downpours. But, then again, there wasn't supposed to be
snow in our area, either, and yet there it was.
While sitting in class, the wind picked up and began
screaming past the windows. The blinds
were drawn as much as they could be, but it's an older school desperately in
need of some cosmetic upgrades, so the window dressings were more of a peep
show. Our classroom, located on the
bottom floor and within sniffing distance of the in-building Dunkin Donuts,
looked out to the street where the trees blew around and leaves sailed past the
windows like shoppers on Black Friday right after the doors open at Best
Buy.
By the time class ended hours later, the mist had turned to
more of a spray, and it was falling sideways in gusty sheets. The wipers held it all at bay for a while,
but the precipitation was blowing so ardently that most of the ride home the windshield
actually stayed completely dry despite the barrage of water from the cars in
front of me. I couldn't understand it as
it was quite obviously and persistently raining. I could see it in the streetlights as it
pounded toward the ground. And yet --
the glass in the front and rear of my car didn't show so much as a whisper of
water. Tree branches were dancing while various
unsecured lawn items and trash flew across the road, but we were all driving along
seemingly in a giant mobile bubble, undeterred by the meteorological elements
happening directly around us.
It was strangely and yet eerily entertaining.
If we could just beg Mother Nature for every storm to be so
easy, to envelop us in invisible protective gear that requires neither scraper
nor shovel (nor wipers), we might survive another winter. But it's probably too much to hope for. After all, last winter was nonexistent. Except for the Halloween storm and an
occasional spritz of flakes, it was the mildest winter for both snow and temperatures
that I recall in my entire lifetime.
Now because I mentioned the bubble of storm protection and
the mild winter, you know we're going to get our asses kicked, and it's going
to be my fault. Hurricane Sandy had
played herself out by the time she hit here; this nor'easter seems to have done
the same. Don't you dare come pointing
at me if we wake in the morning to half a foot of snow, though. I did my time in the multiple big storms
we've had in the last five decades, and I did my time through the Blizzard of
'78 (gosh, that was a beaut, if I do say so myself) and I did my time shoveling
tens of feet worth of the white shit two years ago.
Yup, if we wake up to snow, just tell Mother Nature I burst
her bubble … and that I ran like hell.
