Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411220028
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As if, somehow, the weather was out to get us.
Well, I suppose we all do feel a bit that way after last winter. I've found myself responding to each retributive speculation I've heard by saying, "I don't care if it snows. We can get 10 feet of snow, for all I care. Just - please! - no more ice storms."
No more ice storms. Please.
The other day a friend who lives in Giles County told me that she's given herself until Thanksgiving to get over her seige mentality. "The thought of being trapped indoors again like last winter," she said, shaking her head.
I know what she means. I admitted to her that I already have 15 gallons of water stored in plastic jugs. Just in case.
(For all the good it would do.)
Honestly now, how can we not take the weather personally after a winter like last year's?
On the other hand, do any of us really believe the weather to be a force with which we can reckon? That somewhere up in the clouds, accounts are kept and balanced, tits for tats are calculated, debits and credits assessed? For either the good or the ill of humankind?
"Give them a lovely Indian summer in Southwest Virginia, if you want to," some heavenly bureaucrat says in the Weather Caucus, throwing down his clipboard with exasperation, "but you know we're gonna have to make it up somewhere. And this year, I'm not gonna be the one to pick out which localities get the tornadoes. No, sir. Someone else can take the heat for that this time around."
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Do they?
Well, yes, they do. Statistics are kept. They're readily available. With only the almanac for reference, I can tell you that Virginia's coldest recorded temperature is minus 30, registered at Mountain Lake Biological Station on Jan. 22, 1985; and that Norfolk has an average annual rainfall of 45.22 inches, which is just a tad less than they have every year in Addis Ababa.
But keeping statistics is merely what we do when we feel we ought to do something, but know there's nothing really effective that can be done.
We observe and observe. Without improving a thing.
The huge new Doppler Radar station right here in Floyd County - the one we have a perfect view of from our very own front porch - that tower is so massive, so overpowering, so surrealistic that the Man of the House, upon first observing it, said, "With a thing like that, they ought to be able to control the weather."
But of course, "they" can't. "They" are just observing. Gathering data. Making statistics and little predictions, keeping accounts down here that may or may not relate at all to accounts kept (or not) on high.
The heavenly bureaucrat gazes down at Floyd County and says, "Guys, would you look at that! What is that thing? Some kind of talisman? Some kind of charm or amulet against ice storms?"
He flips a page on his clipboard. Shakes his head. Chuckles. "What a joke," he says to himself. "Those poor, dumb, superstitious scoundrels. They're gonna pay for this later on."
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB