QotD: Hot in here etc.

Oddly enough, I probably know more about extreme and strange weather than anyone besides a meteorologist. During my time as an interviewer for a series of programs on disasters, I met with experts, witnesses, rescuers and survivors from all over the world. I've spent hours talking with survivors of Cyclone Tracy, discussed the finer points of the term "weather bomb," met a man who lost his entire family to Hurricane Juan. I spent a week in a small town in New Brunswick that lost most of its men in 1958 to a bizarre and unexpected storm that hit the Northumberland Strait, and another week in a town on the Mediterranean that flooded when the dam burst, the result of lousy engineering and heavy rains. I even interviewed a woman who'd lost her family to a tsunami in Newfoundland (not really weather, but damn!). Despite all this, I've gotten off pretty lightly with weather. Here are a couple of memorable weathery times in my life.

#1. The Microburst

A microburst is a sudden sinking of high cold air that hits the ground and produces short-lived but extreme winds. Along with lightning and good old clear air turbulence, they're one of the few weather phenomena that can grab an aircraft and swat it to the ground. They're short-lived but intense. Here's a handy diagram that looks a bit like an Art Deco moustache.

Micro1

Pity the poor suckers caught in the curl of that terrible swift moustache. This is a brief tale starring myself as one of those suckers, trapped in the rage of those stout whiskers.

Two-three weekends back, Saskatoon had its annual 2nd Avenue sidewalk sale, in which the bulk of the downtown stores distended themselves onto the street, throwing out long tables and racks packed with clothes, lightweight nylon tents, shoe stands and hattrees, you name it. DJ park themselves two to a block and blast out classic hits from the past twenty years while families pack the streets, eat ice cream and poke at the merchandise. The sales on offer are a little bit deceptive: 75% percent off a pair of factory reject slacks is not as much of a deal as you would think. The pants I tried on all had some strange defect or deformity, clenching horribly around my thighs while the ass or crotch gathered and drooped. Picks in stitches, twisted inseams, handsome shirts that inexplicably refused to fit across my chest (partly because my body is bigger and broader than I think; I was incredibly skinny well into my twenties, and I've never grown used to the adult body that grew over my old one) and all manner of odd sizes and rejected styles.

I went down to the sidewalk sale with my mother on a Friday. The weather had been difficult to predict all week, with hot weather suddenly undercut by cloud and rain. Hail threatened but never arrived. The wind had been picking up steadily all afternoon, going from a faint breeze to a series of gusts that knocked over cardboard signs and pushed against display tents. Clouds began to move over the sky, making the sun intermittent. The crowds became quieter as the light greyed out and the wind picked up an edge of cold. You could see people formulating exit strategies as they moved along the racks. The vendors wore looks of cheerful resignation on their faces as they saw the sales coming to a close for the day: sick of the crowds and keeping track of cheap damaged goods since nine in the morning. A few had already started to move some of their racks inside. The cold wind kept rising, pulling shirts from hangers and ruining hairstyles.

Me and my mother decided it was a good time to head back home before the storm hit. We had a good fifteen-minute walk ahead of us, and we didn't much feel like getting caught in the rain. We started out, keeping close to the side of the building in case the rain hit suddenly.

At the corner of 2nd and 21st we came out from the shelter of the buildings and stopped. The wind had turned weird: cold, dense and granular, like old crystallized syrup. Goosebumps raised up in defense. Then the burst hit, a sudden rush of cold wet air carrying plumes of sand and dust and trash. My skin and hair were coated instantly in a layer of damp dust. We ran back along the street into the rapidly thinning crowd. Nylon tents lifted up and flew down the street, vendors running after them. Displays collapsed, tables overturned, rejected shirts blew through the air. Isolated shouts and the skitter of metal along pavement. People ran out from shop doors, grabbed armfuls of goods and ran back inside.

We ran into a Tramps music store and watched the rest of it, the frantic activity as everyone tried to take down their displays and hustle them inside. The gusts kept coming, each one bringing another load of dirt and trash. Every so often someone would pass by the store, sprinting from or pushing into the wind, their hair, clothes and skin blasted down to a uniform beige. The streets emptied out in five minutes.

#2. My Own Private Funnel Cloud

Last summer, when I worked at a film production company whose offices were located cheaply close to the railyards, I would cut across railway property on my way to and from work. The section I always cut across was a long thin wedge of packed gravel and spiky grass between the road and the tracks. Hard black grasshoppers and tiny spring-legged beige bugs would leap away from my feet and up into the air as I walked through the grassy patches, surrounding me in a cloud of startled insect life.

On one afternoon the wind kept gusting as I walked along, kicking up clouds of dirt. I watched as one cloud curled up and spun itself around for a couple of revolutions. Instead of spinning apart and falling, though, this one seemed to contract and cohere, almost toppling over but righting itself like a top. Suddenly the dust cloud grew to about ten feet in height, straightened out and began to move along the ground, heading over the gravel, sucking more dust into itself as it came closer. It looked busy, as if it had somewhere to go and needed the dirt and debris to give itself a body. I stepped out of the way and watched as it passed, now twelve feet high, a perfect swivelling funnel. I stuck my boot into it to see if had any effect, and then my hand. Sand stung my palm. It kept going, drifted towards the tracks and ran into a wire fence. The cloud seemed to get stuck at the fence, moving along its length but unable to cross, until it exhausted itself, spiralling down into a snakelike shuffle in the grass.

It was cool.