Sitting comfortably in the super-charged path of my Kenmore 5000 - a Category Five blast of pure kilowatt-sucking air-conditioned power - I was stunned by a line in one of those wonderful Richard Russo novels about poetic, hopeless goobers stuck in some backwater helltown up past Albany: "The paper says rain."
The paper? The damned paper? Who gets their weather from the paper anymore? For Crissakes, the freaking paper was printed last night. At the very best, the so-called "weather" is circa yesterday afternoon. It's about as relevant as the Compromise of 1850. Entire cold fronts have shifted in the last half-day. Tropical depressions have moved hundreds of miles in that slow, creeping timespan.
These days, "the weather" changes as fast as - well, er - the weather.
That is to say, reporting is real-time, baby. They show the latest forecast in my office building's elevator. Desktop applicatons abound. Text messages drop into the queue. I want (and can get) the latest Doppler 4000 charts on my mobile. The old-fashioned time/temperature sign outside the local funeral home or bank has mainlined some brand of instant data heroin and is multiplying in demonic Fantasia broom-sequence madness all over the wireless world.
This pre-dates New Orleans, my friends. It's not that "eveything has changed" and we're living in some strange post-Katrina landscape in which Mother Nature takes on the sinister killing glare of an al Qaeda operative. This goes back a ways, back to some blurring of the space-time continuum, a moment when the Weather Channel went from cheap charlie basic cable throw-in extra to "programming."
Have you seen Storm Stories? Or Full Force Nature? How about It Could Happen Tomorrow? Me either, but I know some people who have. I come from a long line of weather buffs actually. Barometer fiddlers. Weather-band radio buyers. Generator owners. Foul weather gear wearers.
It is for them, and their growing ranks, that programmers create this "disastertainment." For ratings, of course. And so that we can all be prepared...When Nature Strikes!
And it will strike, of that I'm convinced. As a confirmed lightning-phobe who closes windows tighly and will not use the telephone during an eletrical storm, I have a healthy fear of the natural elements. There was that hurricane my family rode out on the Jersey Shore back in '71, another I covered for The Riverdale Press in the 80s (when a falling tree just missed my Ford), and the heat-related blackouts of '77 and '03. I can still see the image of Jerry Koosman on the hill at Shea go dark as the electricity ebbed. That and the announcement three years ago in a 44th Street bar that the tap was dry, they'd stopped serving, and our dwindling band of sweaty office refugees would have to be sent into that warm, hopelessly dark Manhattan night to somehow bribe a cabbie into taking us home - either that, or sleep in Bryant Park.
Yeah, the worst weather is always summer-borne, in my llving memory. Blizzards leave me cold.
So this week's triple-digital weather - as the TV weather stars intone with such good cheer - is part of our own huge, all-encompassing reality show. Yesterday, as a massive pro-Israel rally kicked out the jams here on East 42nd Street (and a tiny anti-Zionist counter-rally looked for shade across the street), everyone still talked about the heat. Especially the handful of cops in full, black battle gear, index fingers outstretched on M-16s and sweating pouring from underneath Kevlar helmets like the East River through Hell's Gate.
Sure enough, MSNBC's bright, newsy homepage made the switch today. All-out war in the Middle East became a sidebar. The new headline? "Summer Sizzler." Part of their in-depth global warming coverage, I guess.
Did I mention, it's hot?
UPDATE: Tropical Storm Beryl - which just happens to be my nickname for the Artist - is bearing down on defenseless coastal New England, and Lance Mannion is live on the scene in the BloggerSeven News Truck. We switch now LIVE to Chatham. Lance, what can you tell us about conditions there?
Tags: Weather+Channel weather Beryl hurricane