A Word Edgewise |
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A Word Edgewise |
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Last Updated 06/30/05
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Email: mjclen@our-town.com
WEATHER
FORECASTING IS NOT ALWAYS CERTAIN
Mom had a knee that predicted weather change for her. Certain pain was a
harbinger of rain or cold weather. I’m not sure the pain was different for the
two, but she was sure a change was coming.
It worked pretty well for her at home in Erath
County, but when she moved with us to Cloudcroft, New Mexico, the knee became
very confused. She needn’t have felt ashamed of the failure, other forecasters
were never sure of Cloudcroft weather.
When you live perched on top of a mountain 9,000 feet
into the atmosphere, your weather is made “in house.” Her knees were both
cold there most of the time, but a bright sparkling sun could glisten off deep
snow making you think it was warm. In fact, often shirtsleeves were enough for
short dashes into the snow.
The first year we were there, when the heavens opened
and dropped 32 inches of snow in a day and night, we were amazed. Such a
beautiful world! Our car, parked in front of the house was completely buried.
Sliding off the tin roof the snow came up to the windows even though the house
was on the side of a mountain so that the front was high off the ground. Mom
watched one deep pile of snow, sheltered in a corner against the house, all the
rest of the winter. It remained from that snow the last of October until the
following May. She, and the rest of us, were ready to see lilacs in bloom and
spring.
El Paso weather forecasters (dad would say, in fun, prognosticators) had
no clew to tell our weather. They were ninety miles away and flatlanders.
Roswell, the other direction across the pass from us, was one hundred and twenty
miles. It was caught between the Llano Estacado and Sacramento Mountains, our
mountains, where their weather people were stretched to predict locally. Those
were the two nearest TV stations we could get.
So, mountain people being strictly independent and
original in life styles, depended on Gordon Winsett to predict the weather. He
had no rheumatic pains to rely on—or maybe he did have the pains, he just
didn’t use that method. Gordon had a store partway down the mountain east of
us where he had his own unique “dopler” to read.
In the glass showcase of his store Gordon had a
series of jars, about like baby food jars, filled with bear grease. He made his
predictions by the cloudiness of the
grease as the weather changed. More accurately than the TV weathermen the
predicted snow, blizzards, rain, and when the weather would break. Maybe that
isn’t so far fetched when you think of it. The bear that gave up the grease
had the knowledge to forecast weather. He knew when to find a nice shelter,
cave, gully or fallen tree, and
wait out a storm. Although the bears there did not hibernate all winter, he knew
when to come forth.
Maybe the weather was easier to predict there. We
soon found that every day in July and most of August, it would rain on a picnic;
that the first day of hunting season would welcome a big snow, that Christmas
would be white. We knew that snow did not mean school would be dismissed, though
listening to the radio to find that El Paso was dismissing school because of two
inches of snow brought hope of our school closing. We did close early for the
buses to run when a blizzard seemed eminent.
But even mother gave up trying to predict the weather
there, she just hoped the huge fir trees that towered above our house would not
yield to the high winds or the snows.
I made fun of mom and her weather knee—but my
arthritic shoulder told me this cold spell was coming. Maybe I ought to keep a
record to see how often I can predict. Come to think of it, “Only fools and
new-comers predict Texas weather.” So, I’ll not bother you with my
prognostications. I’ll just grin and enjoy whatever comes—I hope.