Severe Storm Warning

Posted on January 5, 2003 in Weather

A violent wind barrels down our short, garage-lined street tonight. It bumps on our windows like it was trying to get in and get us to feed it. Virginia hides; Tracy crouches in a senile stupor wherever she can find a warm body. She’s drooling on my foot as I write this. Now she bolts out. Or is that dark form crossing the office the ghost of Ambrose?

A Severe Storm Warning is out:

Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service

…VENTURA COUNTY INTERIOR VALLEYS- VENTURA COUNTY COASTAL VALLEYS- LOS ANGELES COUNTY VALLEYS- 900 PM PST SUN JAN 5 2003
…HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON TUESDAY…

FOR NORTHEAST WIND INCREASING TO 30 TO 40 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 60 MPH. WIND STRONGEST BELOW PASSES AND CANYONS.

Earlier they said that the gusts blew over 45 mph and were worst in the foothills. Like we needed to be told that.

I heard something crashing outside. I put on my jacket and went out. My eyes quickly dried up and felt spotted by microscopic broken bits ripped off the sides of Mount Modjeska. A gigantic plastic sheet, pulled over the top of a condo down the street, flapped in the wind. It looked to me like the ghost of a manta ray. It put to rest my fears that what I had heard was the scraping of the purple plum tree against our windows: for that to happen, the wind would have to jerk it out by the roots and lift it twenty feet onto our deck.

A bearded man wearing nothing but a t-shirt and gym shorts jogged after his silvery Irish setter. “Isn’t this great?” he called up to me. He looked back at the plastic tarp. “Someone ought to go up there and just pull that thing off,” he called to me. “I’ve got the ladder,” I replied. “You can go up.” He laughed and moved on.

I expected a change in the weather yesterday. “We need rain,” I thought. “Something to scour the earth clean and moisten the roots of the chaparral.” Shortly after dusk tonight, I got my wish for rain, transmogrified.

Until noon on Tuesday, eh? I will bury my head under the comforter and anticipate the stillness.