How Is the Weather?


(January 2019)

3. Unpredictable

Some dry facts about wet times:

In the area around Crescent City, the average annual rainfall is seventy inches, or, as Ford would say, 177.8 centimeters. That's nearly twice the average annual amount for the fifty U.S. states. It compares to fifty inches per year where Teek was living, some miles south of Atlanta, while at film school.

On the other hand, the rainfall in coastal northern California is seasonal—a rainy season lasting from mid-September to mid-June. Admittedly, that is a long season. Georgia's fifty inches a year is more spread out. While October was quite a rainy month in Crescent City, it was the driest month of the year in Georgia.

This is not to say that each day, every day, from September through June, is dreary and rainy in northern California. Dipper, Wendy, and Mabel could expect fully or mostly sunny weather for half the year, or 182 days total. When a rainy spell did hit, though, it hung around for a few days and poured down a lot of water. Atlanta, by contrast, enjoys 205 sunny days per year, though in summer that could be better said "suffers through." Around there the humidity and heat combined to give a typical summer day the same climate as a minivan with the windows rolled up parked in the sun on an asphalt lot.

Though the twins and Wendy were almost never in Crescent City during the summers—they were back in Gravity falls by then—summers were mild and pleasant there, dry, sunny, with a temperature that rarely topped sixty-five degrees. That was the tempering effect of the Pacific. The moisture coming off that great body of water was also the reason that the U.S. has rain forests in the Pacific Northwest.

So the weather over the first weeks of January 2019 in Crescent City was by no means unusual. In fact, it was exceptionally usual. The daily highs and lows almost always were spot on the historical ones. The days of rainfall (though not on the same dates) kept to the normal sixteen per month, and the amount of rain seemed to target itself for the average of 7.6 for a typical January. In other words, it didn't always rain, but when it did, it rained beer—sorry, that's an old commercial. Try that again: It didn't always rain, but when it did, it rained less than half an inch a day.

On a couple of afternoons Dipper had to practice his sprints in a light rain. On more days, under an overcast sky, no shadows showed up to pace him. And he practiced on a few sunny days. Par for the course.

It rained for a while on the last Friday of the month. Nothing you could call a downpour, but a few days of rain late in January had swollen the creek behind their yard. It wasn't exactly a whitewater stream, nothing to compare to the rushing creeks in the higher parts of Gravity Falls Valley, but it nearly filled its bed and came to within ten inches of the bridge they had built across it. Dipper and Wendy went out that afternoon after they got home from the University to clear floating twigs and branches so the water wouldn't dam up and overflow the bridge.

Tripper and Don Coyote went along, and Tripper helped by grabbing the twigs and dragging them off to the side, where they wouldn't wash back in.

"Think it's going to rise more than this?" Dipper asked.

Wendy pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. "Nah, it's lower than it was on Wednesday. And this rain's trailing off. Radar looks like it'll be partly cloudy for the night and the rest of tomorrow."

"You want to come to the track meet?" he asked her.

She pretended to get ready to throw him in the water. "Dude! Seriously? How many of your track meets have I missed?"

"Um—one?"

"There's your answer. You guys gonna take the bus to Redwood? Or do you want to ride down with me?"

"How about I ride the bus down with the team and ride back with you? That way I won't have to mope with them if we lose, and I won't have to put up with them joking if I manage to win."

"That's my paranoid wet husband." They kissed and then hauled the rakes and spade back, waiting for the dogs to go charging through the back gate. "Think we ought to dig out a drain here?" Wendy asked.

The broad, shallow pool of water—really a mud puddle with delusions of grandeur—sprawled around the roots of the pecan and walnut trees. "Maybe," Dipper said. "I'll bet the ground didn't get this soggy before the privacy fence went up. What, trench it and do like a concrete culvert under the fence about right there?"

"Yeah, probably get some four-inch perforated drainage pipe, a buttload of gravel, and maybe a pre-cast culvert. We'll need do dig—wait a sec." At the edge of the puddle, she paced off the distance to the fence. "Need to dig about a fifteen-foot trench this side, then outside the fence about ten feet, maybe at a one per cent slope. Then we'll need a concrete channel and some good-sized rocks for the outlet, so runoff won't erode the creek bank."

"You are so smart," Dipper said.

"Put in time with Dad's construction crews, that's all," she said, grinning. "Let's go put up the tools and get out of these wet clothes."

"And into a dry bed?"

She shrugged apologetically. "Wrong day for that, Dip. But I'd love to cuddle under a blanket with some cups of nice hot tea. Make it up to you later!"

"That's a deal," he said. "Hey, if you're feeling, you know, you don't have to drive down—"

"Are you kidding? You couldn't keep me away!"

"Mabel can't go, though," Dipper sad as they walked back to the house, preceded by the dogs, who kept looking around to make sure they hadn't lost the stragglers.

"Right, she's going in to work on that display project or whatever."

"So just me and you."

"Suits me. When we get back, I'm sure we'll hear all about her paintings and how she's the worst artist at Olmsted!"

"Why does she doubt herself like that?" Dipper asked.

Wendy gave him a long blank gaze. "Man, I just don't know," she said.


Redwood was a four-year school in Arkwright, about twenty-five miles south-southeast of Crescent City, down past Klamath. The meet was nearly unofficial—it wouldn't count toward the state championship and was more an exhibition match than anything else, but it would kick off the competitive season.

It was slated to begin at nine in the morning. That meant the bus had to leave UAW no later than seven-thirty to give the runners a chance to dress out and warm up a little.

Dipper and Wendy planned to leave in his car at seven to get to the campus and meet the bus. Ordinarily that would have been no big deal. The distance to the campus was less than five miles, and on an early Saturday morning, traffic would be light. The joker in the deck that morning was—

"Fog," Wendy said as she opened the door. "Well, we've got plenty of time."

"It's heavy," Dipper said, peering out into the yard. They walked to his car. "Be real careful."

"This'll burn off by mid-morning," Wendy said as she got behind the wheel. "You got a good bus driver?"

"I suppose," he said. "This is our first bus trip this year!"

"Tell him from me to be careful."

Though they had to creep, they arrived at the WAU main gym—the assembly point—in plenty of time. They saw the bus and parked next to it. "I think it's getting worse," Dipper said. "The parking-lot lights are hard to see, even."

"Seen worse in the Valley," Wendy told him. "Anyhow, most of the way's on 101, so no unexpected curves or anything." Still, to Dipper she sounded faintly worried. After a few minutes, she said, "Maybe they'll cancel."

"Probably not," Dipper said. "This will burn off. Anyhow, in high school we had meets on real dark mornings sometimes. The fog down around San Francisco can get a lot denser than this."

"Tule fog," Wendy said. "The scourge of the Central Valley."

Dipper took her hand. —You're really worried, aren't you?

Yeah, kind of. I don't doubt that your driver'll be safe or anything, but you know—lot of idiots on the road!

—Why don't you go back home? There won't be a lot to see, anyhow. This is just a kind of practice meet.

Nah, I want to go. But Dipper? Uh, would it matter if you drove down with me, instead of on the bus?

—I'll ask the coach. I think that's his car that just drove up.

It was. The coach, who had met Wendy and who had been impressed by her (few people were not impressed on meeting Wendy Corduroy), pondered for a minute. "I suppose that'll be OK," he said. "Can she keep up with the bus?"

Wendy, standing nearby, said, "That won't be a problem."

A little before the scheduled set-off time the bus started and rumbled slowly out of the parking lot, with Wendy not far behind. "Want me to drive?" Dipper asked.

"I got this, thanks. But you were right—this fog's getting crazy thick."

The bus, and they, drove cautiously at fifteen miles under the speed limit. When the highway rose to crest a hill, the fog thinned so their visibility became a hundred yards or so—and then when it rolled down into a valley, the mist closed in and they could see for only fifty yards. At times Wendy had to slow, though she always kept the taillights of the bus at least blurrily visible ahead.

Dipper's phone rang after about fifteen miles of travel. It was the coach. "Pines, the meet's delayed until ten. We're gonna pull off in a mile at the overlook, wait to see if this thins out."

"Got it," Dipper said. "You guys be careful."

He told Wendy. She leaned forward anxiously, peering ahead. A side road opened off to the right, and the bus took that. She followed, slowing to ten miles an hour before braking. They were in a parking lot that paralleled 101. The parked bus kept its lights on. Wendy stopped a few feet behind it it and put on the flashers.

Though the sun had risen, theoretically, shortly after they'd set out from the University, the fog had barely lightened. They could hear, but not see, ocean waves crashing off to the right. Wendy, holding Dipper's hand, asked mentally, Are we on the beach?

—Pretty close to it. I think I know where we are, in the state park. If this is the overlook I think it is, when it's clear you can see the beach and some big boulders lying offshore. Right now—well, yeah, if we roll down our windows, we could smell the salt air. Fog's just too heavy to let us see anything.

"It's not getting any better," Wendy murmured after five minutes.

"No wind at all," Dipper said. "And I guess the sun's not high enough yet to burn this off. We may have to cancel after all—"

"Brace!" Wendy shouted.

A heartbeat later, a car roared out of nowhere, its tires screeching, missing them—and the bus ahead—by inches. Then it vanished in the fog, and they heard the shriek of brakes and a crash.

"Driver thought he was still on the 101!" Wendy said, jumping out. "Dip, get the big flashlight!"

They ran past the bus—the coach was already ahead of them, but he waited until they caught up—and then Dipper's flashlight cut through the fog and revealed the red trunk of a car that tilted crazily to the right. Smoke or steam poured from under a crumpled hood.

The car, a 2017 Hotsch sedan, had careened into a wooden guardrail and then had wound up with its hood planted against a tight grove of birch trees. The right headlamp was out, the left one bent in and tilted up, illuminating the pale bark of the trees with its pattern of staring eyes. The engine rumbled and clanked. The coach got the driver's door open.

A middle-aged guy gazed at them from the flopping remnant of an airbag. "What happened?" he asked in a woozy voice.

The coach leaned in and switched off the engine. "Anybody else in the car?" he asked.

"Who're you?" the driver asked.

Wendy took the flashlight from Dipper and got the rear door open. "Nobody back here!"

"I'm gonna meet my daughter for her birthday," the guy said.

"Nobody else in the front," the coach said. "Pines, call 911. Tell them the location's the overlook a mile north of DeMartin Beach."

Dipper phoned it in, thinking The 911 operators are going to get to know me personally.

The man, who seemed dazed but not seriously injured, came and sat on the steps of the bus. He told them his name, Samuel Kurznor, and said he was heading down to Sacramento for his daughter Ruth's twenty-first birthday. He didn't even realize he'd driven off the highway. After a few minutes they heard sirens, and the CHP and an ambulance showed up.

As the EMTs checked out Kurznor, Wendy and Dipper talked to the patrolmen. Again Wendy told them what had happened—"I saw the guy's headlights and realized that in the fog he'd swerved off, thinking he was still on the highway. He barely missed us and then plowed right along the guard rail, braking until he hit the trees. Our dashcam may show something, but the fog's real heavy."

The medical crew loaded Kurznor into the ambulance and it and the cop cars rolled away. The coach phoned his counterpart at Redwood, talked for a few minutes, and then said, "OK, they say the fog's lifting there. Pines, you OK to go on, or had you and your wife rather go back home after all that? No sweat if you want to give this one a pass."

Dipper glanced at Wendy. "Let's go on, Dip," she said softly. "Win one for me."

"At least the fog's not as bad," Dipper said.

They drove south, carefully, and through an unusual phenomenon.

The fog had indeed thinned along the highway—visibility was a mile or more.

Yet on either side, it seemed almost as thick as ever. It was like driving through a narrow steep-sided gorge lined with gray clouds instead of rock.

Anyway, they got to the college, they held the meet, and Dipper drew a first in the hundred-meter and in the eight-hundred-meter. Not too shabby a showing.

Dipper took the wheel for the drive back home. By mid-afternoon the sun had chased off the fog, and they drove through a cool, partly cloudy day.

"Dip," Wendy murmured as they pulled into the driveway of their own house, "congratulations."

"Thanks," Dipper said softly. "Wendy, what's the matter?"

She shook her head. "I dunno, man. But—something is."