KITE-FLYING WEATHER

A tornado cut a five-mile swath through Western Massachusetts Saturday evening when a cold front moved through the area.  By the time it got to my end of Northeastern Massachusetts, the storm packed heavy rain, moderate winds, and sent my semi-full recycle bin flying, dumping its entire contents all over my patio.

Last week we had about eight inches of fresh snow that melted when we hit 70 degrees a couple of times.  Today it hit the low 50s, and this evening it is 27.  Wednesday it might hit mid-60s, while Friday I'll be heading to work with a temperature outside of about 16 degrees. 

This is New England at her best.

When the winds aren't wreaking havoc destroying buildings or strewing bottles and cans all over the yard, this is also the time of year when kite flying starts.  March is notoriously windy, but February's winds combined with unusually mild temperatures bring many people with kites outside earlier than planned.

One of the kite flyers we encounter is a grown man with two kites attached to the same string but anchored several yards apart.  I have never seen a two-kite contraption quite like this one, and I am impressed not only when the gentlemen, sitting next to his mini-van in the Hampton State Park lot, flies the kites; I am equally impressed watching him carefully bring the kites back to Earth one painstaking step at a time.  He still manages to fly his second kite through the breezy ocean air while working to detach the first one that has floated to the ground.

Further up the beach, more toward Hampton center, a family of kite flyers is at work sending up three kites.  The youngest daughter's kite is soaring well up into the sky.  Dad runs back and forth and back and forth like a duck in a shooting gallery, finally managing to get kite number two airborne.  The older daughter is having a rough time.  She moves down the beach, paying out the string but getting naught for her efforts; the kite careens downward and noses into the sand over and over again.  Finally, a small downdraft hits the kite, nudging it at first then carrying the kite aloft a bit when the wind shifts off the land.

"There you go!  You have it now!" I say as she passes near me.  With this encouragement, she lets more of the string out until finally, like a bird out of the nest, the kite makes wing into the sky.

If every day could be a kite-flying day of cool mornings and evenings with spectacular mid-days of 70 degrees and kites, this would be Utopia.  For now, though, I'll take the crazy temperature-changing, tornado-spawning, snowing, raining, kite-flying weather pre-season Spring sends us.  After all, it is New England.  If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute.