How Is the Weather?


(February 2019)

4-Out of the Blue

Wendy and Dipper talked it out for a few days, debating—informally, of course—the resolution: "Wendy Corduroy-Pines can influence the weather."

Dipper researched weather patterns and anomalies, but nothing really showed up in anything he consulted, books, videos, weather lore, or any other source. The one tenuous thing he discovered was a short item in one of his old books, Folk-Lore of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The sub-heading was "Weather Witching."


The tales of those with power to stir up tempests, summon or end wet weather, and otherwise work mischief by controlling or influencing the elements must have voyaged to these Islands with the Vikings. The oldest stories reflect the ancient Norse deities Freyr and Thor, the former the bringer of fair, calm weather or gentle rain, the latter the father of storms, lightning, and thunder.

. . . .

. . .In Cornwall and Devon, we find stories of weather witches, sorcerers or more often sorceresses who can call on rain or dispel floods, who can calm storm-whipped seas or stir up tempests. We notice a hint of this in Macbeth: "When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

The three Weird Sisters can cause tempests and direct the wind. When the First Witch wishes to torment a sailor who has left for Aleppo, the Second says, "I'll give thee a wind," the Third "and I another," and the First concludes that, together, they can send a storm that, whilst it cannot sink the man's ship, can bring him misery.

. . . There are people yet living who aver that, in Devon, an old woman who lived only a generation ago could cause rain to fall by sacrificing a fat white goose, binding its legs and wings and casting it into a bonfire made of alder wood.


There wasn't much more—lots of things about would-be rainmakers, cloud seeding, and so forth, but they didn't have anything to do with what had happened at the fire or just after the car crash.

"Maybe I'm just going crazy," Wendy said with a wry smile one evening.

"No," Dipper told her. "One time was odd. Twice starts to get creepy. Let's test it and see if something's really there or if it's coincidence."

For three Saturdays running, Wendy wished for the weather to change. One Saturday when it was sunny and warm, she asked for a good rain. The sun shone all day long, and not a drop fell that night. The next Saturday brought the familiar drizzle. She tried to turn it off. If she managed it, it took a day and a half, and even then there was hardly any difference on Monday between the mists and the drizzle. Next Saturday, warm for Crescent City but with very still air, she tried to work up a west wind—should have been easy, since the prevailing winds were from the west or northwest. Toward sunset, nearly eight hours later, it got little breezy—with gentle gusts from the east.

"Maybe you need a goose and a bonfire," Dipper said.

Luckily, Mabel—who had taken blue ribbons in the art exhibit—wasn't close enough to hear that. Wendy gave him a playful shove. "Why should a goose suffer to reassure me?" she asked.

However, Dipper was nothing if not thorough. He wrote out accounts of both events, with Wendy sending him telepathic messages, reading what he wrote, and offering corrections or expansions. Then he made a list:


1-Rain put out a grass fire. Reasons for thinking Wendy did it-she yelled out to the clouds and asked for rain and it started to fall within about two minutes. It only rained in a small area, from the look of the pavement, about a half-mile circle from the center of the fire would have held all the rain from that cloudburst. Reasons for doubting—it rained anyway later that night and all the next day. Might have been just a freak shower. I remember when we were like eight years old, it rained right across the street from our elementary school but the school was in the sun and stayed dry.

2-Fog closed in. We were driving and stopped. Another car saw our flashers but thought we were on the highway and going slow. Almost hit us, crashed into a tree, driver got out with minor injuries, car totaled. Later on fog still thick. Reason for thinking Wendy changed it—Wendy was driving and wanted it to clear up, and it did, all along 101 and then out to the college we were competing with. Weird clearing, though—a lane about 100 ft wide all along the route, and past that the fog was dense. Reasons for doubting—I looked up fog on the web and saw photos of fog banks that just ended abruptly, like a slice out of a cake. However, this was caused by the fog edging up to dry air, like desert, and evaporating. Did not find any photos of "lanes" in fog.

Conclusion-?


"I think," he told Wendy, "our sample's too small."

"Hm. Well, I was driving both times. Maybe I have to be in a car?"

"I don't know how that would make a difference. Think I ought to call Grunkle Ford?"

Wendy considered that but slowly said, "No, don't. Not yet. It's probably just crazy coincidence. They happen."

"But if it happens a third time—"

She rubbed his shoulders. "Then it's time to worry," she said. "I'm gonna try really hard not to make any weather wishes, though."


Otherwise, things went on well. They worked their butts off but kept their grades high. Mabel got a write-up in a state-wide magazine featuring her artwork. Dipper won two more hundred-meter dashes, lost a third but won the 800 in that meet. Life seemed to be either reassuring them or lulling them, as it can do.

They headed into the last weekend in February with the question unresolved. An unusually warm spell had set in, with record high temperatures for four days running, and it continued into Monday and Tuesday.

But Tuesday afternoon after Dipper got home from track practice, he found Mabel and Wendy watching WeatherNet. "Big change coming," Wendy said. "Look at the map."

He dropped his backpack on the floor next to the sofa and sat between them. "Whoa. Lot of red!"

The map showed a huge blotch of red and yellow out to sea, to the northwest of Washington and Oregon. Kathy, the cheerful weather forecaster, said, "And it's coming in like a freight train, folks. Now, this cold air is going to ride in so fast that it'll rise up over the warm air we have hanging on, and that's the opposite of what usually happens. This is called an occluded front, and it means stormy weather. We can look for heavy rain becoming frozen precip, strong gusty winds, and even the threat of an unusual late-winter tornado."

"Better batten down the hatches," Dipper said.

"Tripper hates storms," Mabel said. She had drawn her heels up onto the sofa and was hugging her knees. "Remember when we had that big windstorm last spring?"

Oh, yeah. It hadn't lasted very long, but it had sent Tripper into a shivering fit. Finally they had taken him downstairs to the basement—not really finished, in that it had very little furniture, but it was more soundproof than the main floor, and the noises of wind whistling in the eaves and branches breaking in the forest were muffled there.

"When's this hitting?" Dipper asked.

Wendy had muted the TV, but kept the captions on. "Tonight, it says. Hope we don't get a lot of ice or snow. I don't know if the road crews would come out here in the wilderness."

"I'd be more worried about losing power," Dipper said. "If the trees ice, we'll get breaks in the power lines. I'll check and make sure we have backups. Mabel, I'll give you a flashlight for your bedroom, and we have those battery-powered storm lanterns out in the garage."

"It's funny," his sister said, glancing at the front window. "It's so clear out there right now."

But clouds began to skim in before darkness fell, and then the wind picked up. At Wendy's suggestion, they had an early dinner, and then they went down into the basement. True, they had little in the way of comfort, but they hauled down a beanbag chair, their sleeping bags and air mattresses, and the dogs' beds and bowls, and, just in case, a couple of lanterns. Dipper, always cautious, brought down a fancy portable radio that had special bands for weather and emergency services.

For awhile they just sat on the floor—well, Mabel had draped herself over the beanbag chair, but Wendy, Dipper, and the pups sat on the floor—and talked. The outside wall had only the small window in the door to the back yard, and in the dark that didn't show them anything of the weather.

However, they heard it. "Squall line," Dipper guessed. The wind rose and roared in the forest beyond the back yard.

"Hope no trees fall on the fence," Wendy said.

Then a lash of rain hit the house, and Tripper moaned.

Mabel oozed off the beanbag chair and let him creep into her lap. "It'll be OK, boy," she said.

The pup, Don Coyote, didn't seem as anxious as his dad. Possibly Tripper, who was a very smart dog, remembered the time when he was on his own and had to shelter from storms wherever he could creep. Or maybe his sensitive ears just couldn't stand the tumult.

At nine-twenty a boom like an explosion shook the house, and the light flickered and went off. "That a transformer?" Wendy asked.

"Thunder, I think," Dipper said.

The lights tried to come on again, but then they faded. Dipper switched on one of the lanterns. "Spooky," Mabel said, hugging Tripper.

Wendy asked, "Could it be thunder? In a winter storm?"

"Thundersnow," Dipper said. "Rare, but it happens. What was that?"

"Window breaking?" Wendy guessed, getting to her feet. "I'd better go see."

"Not by yourself." Dipper stood, too.

"Guys, don't be long," Mabel pleaded.

"Just gonna see what the big crash was," Wendy assured her.

They went upstairs. Great room looked fine, Mabel's bedroom was intact, their bedroom and the study—originally a nursery when the house was new—showed no damage. "Must be the garage," Dipper said. He went to check.

No, nothing broken in there, though the wind was buffeting the garage doors as if it were trying to push them down. He came back to Wendy. "Let's look at the deck," he said. "It sounded like it came from the back of the house, I thought."

The wind was blowing toward the left front of the house, so the deck was partly sheltered, but even so, when he opened the sliding-glass door some icy sleet whirled in. "Oh, that's what it was," Dipper said. The outer cover of the hot tub was being lifted by the whirling gusts. It slammed into the side of the house with another loud smack. "Better get this secured," he muttered. It was easiest to haul it into the house and stand it up in the mudroom, which had a tile floor.

Wendy waited for him at the stairway door. "We better get back down, so Mabel won't—" she began.

The whole world outside the house lit up with a blue-white glare, and thunder slammed into the house.

"Close one," Dipper said. "But I think it was cloud-to-cloud, not a ground strike."

The next one, though, hit a tree back in the woods. They heard the crackle a heartbeat before the boom, sounding more like dynamite going off than thunder. Downstairs Mabel screamed.

"I hate this!" Wendy shouted. She turned toward the window, and another whiplash of lightning silhouetted her, standing there with her shoulders squared and her fists clenched at her sides. "Hey! Stop it!" she yelled in that I'm-a-flippin'-Corduroy voice.

The wind and the ice did not let up one iota.

But they herd no more thunder that night. And the next morning the power was back on.

None of them had got much sleep.

The dogs went out into the backyard and surveyed the detritus—not just twigs, but three or four good-sized branches. Some of the nut trees at the back of the yard had lost limbs. Ice coated the grass, and now snow was blowing down over it, maybe an inch so far. However, the fence was intact.

But ice glazed all of the trees, and the fence, too.

As they settled in for their breakfast—just cold cereal and coffee, nobody was in the mood to cook—Mabel tuned the radio to a local station.

". . . and power outages continue across the area," the newscaster said. "Because of that, we have a good many school closures to list—"

"Give us a day off," Mabel pleaded.

First the public school list came, but then the droning went on: "Olmsted College, closed for the day. Western Alliance University, closed for day classes, check the website for word on night classes."

"Whoof," Dipper said. "At least we don't have to worry about school today."

"And the lightning just stopped like magic last night," Mabel said. "That was the worst. I never liked thunderstorms." She ruffled Tripper's ears. "Thanks, Wendy."

Wendy nearly dropped her cup of coffee. "Uh—"

Mabel said, "I heard you order the lightning to stop all the way down in the basement."

Wendy gave Dipper an appalled look. "I'll call Grunkle Ford," he said, putting his hand on hers.

She bit her lip and then shook her head. "I got a better idea, Dip. Track meet this weekend?"

"No, next one's a week from Saturday—"

"OK. We're gonna drive to the Falls right after classes end on Friday afternoon. I've gotta go see my aunt Sallie."

"Yay, my pigs!" Mabel said. "I'm gonna ride along with you guys! We'll take Dipper's car so there'll be room for me and the dogs, and—" she broke off. "Uh, why are you looking at me funny?"

"No reason," Wendy told her. "Sure, you can come along. Only—I think I've got to have some private time to talk to my aunt. She might be the only person who can tell me just what the heck is going on."