Sunday, July 8, 2012

A Significant Meteorological Event


Three Significant Meteorilogical Events

My husband’s niece and her soon to be husband stopped by our house in Las Vegas a few years ago after they had completed the epic Muir trail along the Sierras….2 weeks of being unsupported in the high country amongst the bears, trees, and thunderstorms, and as we were all bobbing around in our swimming pool, I glanced up and noticed what lovely clouds had formed above!  Well, they both just laughed at me with their Anchorage laughs (that ha-ha, you weird “outsiders”, haven’t you ever seen clouds before? laugh), and have done so every time we comment about clouds. 

Well.  La-dee-dah.  I’ll have you know that our own weatherman on Channel 8 the other day actually SAID, and I had to do a double take (yay, DVR!), and yes he actually said, “Today, you may have noticed a significant meteorological event” at which I perked up my ears, ever interested in these kinds of things.  “If you’ll notice off to the east, yes, right there folks, is a cloud!”  Vindication for all my days of marveling at clouds!  From that day forth, we have been heading into days with a bit more humidity (aka: more significant meteorological events) and hopefully into a solid "monsoon" season.  We haven’t had a good "monsoon" season in a few years, and we are sorely in need of some rain.  This cloud-sighting was the first in about 65 days, so we remain hopeful that indeed, they have not become extinct.

The first day of rain in approximately 70 days?  Well, that would be the 4th of July!  Manna from heaven….or God peeing on Sin City….whatever.  We’ll take what we can get and all I can say is that we know we are desert rats when we set up our dinner table outside so we can ENJOY the rain!

It has dawned on me that both places I have been in the past year, here at home and in my dream home of Bergen, Norway, are places of extreme weather, at opposite ends of the spectrum.  And this calls for a special kind of people to inhabit such places.  My family came to the Las Vegas Valley lo-ho-ho-ho-long before air-conditioning, and my dear friend Bjørn’s family, well, his middle name is Bull, because he is a descendent of Ole Bull,  the famous Bergen violinist mentor to that other famous Bergenser, Edvard Greig, so, Bjørn comes equipped with that Bergenser whateveritisthatmakesthemtoleratetherainsowell-itness.  I’m not sure if it is Hurculean tolerance, defiance, stupidity, or captivity, but we do it, with pride.  We brag about our ability to live in such inhospitable conditions and, like heroine addicts, we always say we do it because of that ONE WEEK of the year that is just mind-blowingly awesome.  Yeah.  

Solar Oven with something yummy inside (Le Creuset is SO EMBARRASSED!)

What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.  Well, gotta go.  I’m off to cook something in my solar oven while doing finger pull-ups on my door jambs.