Weather or Not

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

A little over a year ago we had some terrible storms around here – tornadoes touched down all over the area, baseball sized hail, lots of destruction, and (worst of all) several people died. Fortunately my home and family were spared any real damage – a thorough drenching, small leak in the garage, some greenery down – but it was frightening for a while. Just listening to the area’s tornado sirens going consistently for over half an hour and hearing the trees slapping against the house was nerve-wracking enough. A couple of years ago we had a hailstorm - not unusual in itself, but almost singular in that it happened in June and poured so much golf-to-baseball sized hail down the ground was covered from two to six inches deep; it looked almost as if it had snowed. My husband's then-brand-new BMW was severely dented and my aged Buick was totaled. Yes, totaled. So was our roof, as was the roof of almost every house in our area. The roofing contractors simply moved in, going from house to house, and for six months it was almost like living in a popcorn popper.

Which brings me to my topic – weather. Do we ever really realize how much weather is a tool in our books? Yes, you can write a creepy mystery set in a nice suburban villa with brilliant sunshine, balmy breezes and the sound of children laughing in the yard next door. It’s been done, and done well, but to my mind it makes the story lose something. There are those who say the very normalcy of such a setting increases the tension, but I’m not one of them. My mind (no comments, now!) tends to discount danger inherent in bright, sunny days.

How much more disturbing is the low-hanging overcast sky, the shadowy house which no amount of light seems to illuminate completely, the wind scratching at the windows, a driving rain…

Perhaps less-than-perfect weather, night, darkness, shadows all ignite a feeling of unease in a primitive part of our brains. What we cannot see we cannot be prepared for. We are all hardwired to fear the unknown something that lurks in the dark. Did you have monsters under the bed in your childhood? I did. Did I ever see them? Nope, but I knew they were there just the same. Even now that I'm grown up sometimes if I’m working on a particularly intense book, or it’s a stormy night and I’m alone in the house, they might still be there. I’m not going to crawl under and look, either!

Hopefully the dust bunnies that live down there might choke them...

Sometimes having an active imagination can be a curse.

Conversely, it’s very difficult to have a lighthearted comedic story set in that same dank and drear house – or shadowy urban alleyway – under lowering, stormy skies.

There’s a cliché opening that Bulwer-Lytton used in the hyperverbal Victorian era – “It was a dark and stormy night…” Once I was beginning a new project (a Gothic mystery) and had the story pretty much pat, but could not get the beginning started until I really used “It was a dark and stormy night…” after which the story just rolled. When the book was finished I did go back and change it, not wanting to be an object of fun, but for my own personal uses it was invaluable. I do wish I could have used it, though…

Writers have a myriad of tools available to them, and the weather is one of the most effective. There’s nothing like it for setting mood and tone.

At least we can control the weather in our books. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could in real life.

An October to Remember

By Karen McCullough

If you follow this blog closely you might have noticed that I missed posting last month. (I don’t fool myself. You probably didn’t notice. But anyway…) I have an excuse and that’s what this post is all about.

I live in central North Carolina. Early fall is hurricane season here and this one was a doozy.

In September Florence was the headliner for weeks as its course, even while a long way out, showed it making landfall on the coast and then heading northwest to pass right over us. We got ready. We laid in candles, batteries for the lanterns and flashlights, and foods that didn’t need extensive cooking. Stuffed ice in the freezer. Laid in extra canned goods. Put away the patio furniture and planters.

The first part of the forecast for Florence was right. The eye did come ashore over the city of Wilmington on the N.C. coast. But then it stayed there for a couple of catastrophic days, pouring torrents of rain on the eastern part of the state and creating historic floods in many places before it jogged south and lost oomph quickly over South Carolina.

Here in the center of North Carolina, we had rain (lots of rain) and some light wind, but nothing drastic. Many people here welcomed family and friends from down east who had to evacuate flooded homes and towns. After a few days we put away the candles and batteries and ate the extra food.

Then Hurricane Michael zoomed up across the Gulf of Mexico in early October and crashed into Florida. Forecasters told us it would pass well to the east of us bringing us rain and light wind, but nothing to worry about. No one in this area got very concerned about it.

Our mistake. Michael wiped out parts of the Florida panhandle, then raced north and east, losing strength as it went. But it moved fast. And it veered a bit off the center of the projected path. For a day we had heavy rain and light breezes as it approached. But Michael, still a tropical storm, stayed on the west side of the cone rather than in the center, and in the early afternoon, it hit us full on.

It wasn’t as horrible as many in Florida experienced. But it was bad. Frightening For several hours we hid from fifty to sixty mile per hour winds with some higher gusts. Some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen accompanied it, blown sideways at times. The noise was incredible – wind howled and screeched, the trees rattled, rain smacked, smaller branches ratt-a-tatted on the roof constantly, and larger ones hit with the occasional thud. Everything not fastened down blew around and often hit other things.

Our city has a lot of huge old oak and fir trees and many of them went down during the storm. Thousands of trees.  Several hundred houses were damaged. We were lucky ourselves. Though our trees lost a few limbs, they all remained standing and we had no real damage to the house. Probably thousands of cars were smashed.

The next day I went out for a walk with my husband. We counted more than two dozen trees down in just the six-block area we covered. Many of them were across roads and some had entangled power lines in their limbs. The pictures that accompany this were tall taken on the walk and are only a few of the downed trees we saw.

Our power was out for five days. It took almost a week and a half to get cable and internet service back.

Most of the city was without power for a few days. On the second day of the power outage we went for a hot dinner to the home of friends whose power had already been restored. Of the twenty or so traffic-light-controlled intersections we had to pass through to get there, only one had working lights. Some had police officers directing traffic, but they didn’t have enough personnel to cover all the dark intersections.

Our daughter lives in an area of underground power lines and hers was on, so after three days we packed all the meats and other things we wanted to save from the freezer and took them to her, where she made room in her freezer. While there we had the first hot showers in several days and got some time on the internet.

Nonetheless we were counting our blessings even as we sat in the dark in the evenings. My husband and I were both safe. Our house was secure and suffered no real damage. The weather was mild so the loss of heat and air conditioning meant only minor discomfort. We have city water and they have backup generators to make sure the pumping stations keep running. We ate what was in the refrigerator for as long as it remained cool and we had plenty of non-perishable food as well. We have an old-fashioned crock pot that uses sterno (and we keep a supply of sterno around) for heating water for coffee and tea and soups for lunch. We even blessed our backlit Kindles that made reading much easier than trying to do it by the light of battery-run lanterns.

A couple of points I’d like to make to finish up. Even a tropical storm is a terrifying experience. If you’re in a hurricane zone and the authorities suggest you evacuate, do it! Even if the storm goes somewhere else this time, it may not the next. Don’t be complacent.

Not a great picture. It's hard to see that there are actually two

trees down across the road. The second one is about 20 feet 

behind the first.

Second, be prepared. Before each storm, we took in all the patio furniture, filled the car’s gas tank, and charged all our devices, including making sure that the backup batteries for recharging phones and Kindles were completely juiced up. We took the ice the ice maker had already made, bagged it, and stuffed it into open areas of the freezer. When it made another batch, we bagged more until the freezer was just about full. We got out flashlights and lanterns, put batteries in them, and checked all were working. We made sure they were all in a handy place where we wouldn’t have to fumble around in the dark to find them.

Supplies I like to keep on hand for emergencies include spare replaceable batteries for everything, which have to be checked and rotated periodically, and a good variety of non-perishable foods. We always keep extra cans of tuna, beans, chicken, fruit, vegetables and other tins with a long shelf life. As with the batteries, we rotate the stock periodically. We try to keep a five-day supply of sterno in storage. We have enough wood to keep the fireplace going for several days. (In truth, though, if the weather was really cold or really hot, we’d probably go somewhere else after a day or two.) We have a battery-operated radio, but we found we relied more on our smartphones for news and connection with others. They were slow at times because not all the cell towers were working, but enough were that we were usually able to connect. I have two portable battery chargers for the phones, a small one for my purse that will charge my phone twice and a bigger one that will provide up to five charges. We recharged the bigger one every chance we got and it kept our phones going throughout.

One other thing people don’t always think about is money. My sister the banker recommends keeping up to $1000 cash in small bills (nothing larger than $20) in a safe but accessible place. We found out why this time. Our local grocery store was open, running on a generator, but like everyone else in the city, they had no internet connection. They couldn’t process credit or debit cards. Transactions were cash only.

Why I Unplug

I may have posted this here before, but I think it’s important enough to bear repeating.

Spring is almost upon us, and the season brings thunderstorms with it in most of the U.S.  Thunderstorms mean lighting. Do you know how dangerous lightning is to your electronics? Do you unplug your computers, televisions, stereo systems and any other electronic devices before a storm?

If not, why not?

Let me tell you a true story.

Some fifteen years ago, my family and I went to a concert in a city about fifty miles away. It was a great concert and we all had a good time. We noticed on the drive back that there were increasingly large puddles on the ground as we neared home, but didn’t think much more about it. It was late and we were all exhausted, so we went directly to bed.

My youngest daughter, who has always been an early riser, was the first one up the next morning. Her favorite thing to do at that time was to listen to the radio or a CD on the stereo (with earphones) and rock in the rocking chair. She was dismayed when she turned on the stereo and found it didn’t work.

Instead she tried to turn on the television, but it wasn’t working either. Since the lights were on, she knew the electricity was functioning, but apparently not much else was. As a last resort, she decided to turn on the computer and play games. You guessed it. Computer wasn’t working either.
At that point she was still the only person awake, so she grabbed a book and tried to read, but she was understandably distraught.

Once the rest of us got up, we went through the house, checking everything to see what worked and what didn’t. We didn’t know until later, when we talked to neighbors, that there had been a very bad thunderstorm the night before.

There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but we have to assume that lightning hit either our house or one of the power lines very near it. The final tally of destruction: stereo receiver, VCR, television, and computer. We were fortunate that the television and computer were both older and about due for replacement anyway.

We learned our lesson. Now when there’s a thunderstorm approaching, we unplug everything, not just from the electrical lines, but from the cable and phone lines as well. If we’re going out of town for a day, we check the weather forecast. If we’re leaving for longer, we unplug everything just for safety.

Yes, it’s a bit inconvenient, but it would be more than just inconvenient to replace our electronic equipment these days. And since I’m an author and web designer, the loss of a computer would be more than just inconvenient. It wouldn’t kill my business because I back up relentlessly, including using an automated offline back up service. But I would likely lose several days of work time, replacing hardware and restoring software and data. I’d rather lose an hour of work time than risk losing days’ worth.

In a previous career I was a computer software programmer/analyst.  I worked for a company that sold turnkey systems – hardware and software bundled together, installed and modified for the client’s needs.  I did that for fifteen years.  In that time I had two clients whose computers were completely destroyed by lightning strikes on power lines.

We always set up backup systems for our clients so they didn’t lose their custom software or their databases, but it still cost them time and money to replace the hardware and restore all their software to a functioning condition. In one of the cases, the computer was supposedly protected by a heavy duty surge protector.

A side note about surge protectors – they’re a good idea. Really. They do help protect your expensive electronics against routine power spikes. But the dirty little secret of surge protectors is that the affordable ones you buy in the stores are not always fast enough to protect your equipment from a direct lightning strike.

I unplug all my electronics when the weather turns nasty. Unless you live in a place that isn’t prone to thunderstorms, I strongly suggest you do so as well.

Note: if your computer is hard-wired into a network, usually by an Ethernet cable to a modem or router, you need to unplug that as well.  Electricity can follow your cable line into the house as well as the electrical wires. And if you have a multi-function printer, that is probably plugged into a phone line, which is also a conduit. The wisest move is to unplug everything!

Aftermath

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

Adventure and danger are fun in fiction. In real life – not. Two weeks ago on the day after Christmas ten to twelve (depending on which weatherman you listen to) tornadoes hit Dallas and its suburbs.

That afternoon had been warm and humid. The Husband and I had indulged in a quick dip in the hot tub, knowing it would probably be the last for a while as cold weather was predicted. We had been in only about a quarter of an hour when it started to rain. Of course we immediately dashed into the house – like we were afraid we’d get wet, huh? – because we knew a big storm was predicted.

We just didn’t know how much of a storm it would be. It rained sporadically but not very hard for a couple of hours, Then, just around dark, chaos began. The Husband turned on the TV because one of our favorite shows was coming on – except it wasn’t. Every local channel was doing a continual broadcast of the weather. Semi-hysterical weathermen were pointing at multi-colored maps and advising us to find safe rooms in our houses. (We don’t have one, except a closet or two – our house is very open and has many many windows.) I must admit that we weren’t alarmed; the local weathermen have a tendency to get hysterical about ‘approaching bad weather’ that turns out to be nothing but a mild thunderstorm. They do have to keep their ratings up.

This time, however, they were spot on. A few minutes later the rain came, and that was really rain, as if someone had pointed a squadron of fire hoses straight down on our house. After less than half a minute the gutters couldn’t handle the volume and simply overflowed, wrapping the house in a dense curtain of water. The tornado siren less than a quarter of a mile away began to wail. It didn’t stop for over half an hour. On the TV the weatherman was pointing to a bright red/pink area of tornadic activity and we were not cheered to see that it was right over our neighborhood. The wind was fierce, blowing the rain almost sideways. I was afraid that it would be as bad as it had been a couple of years ago, when The Husband had been deployed overseas, when a straight line wind blew so hard it stripped the trees, blew the heavy cover right off the hot tub and shaved a bunch of shingles off the roof, but for us at least it wasn’t. This time. We were fortunate enough to suffer no damage other than the loss of a lot of leaves and a few small branches, flooded gutters and a completely drenched property. Thank You, God. There has been an unprecedented aftereffect, though. 2015 was a very wet year for our region. There had been heavy rain both before and several times after the tornadoes stormed through and the ground was saturated. I didn’t realize how wet it was until we opened the scuttlehole to the crawlspace beneath the house – and for the first time in my memory (and I grew up in this house) there was water standing there. Almost an inch of standing water, despite the fact we live on the top of a substantial hill! Amazing – and in its own way frightening.

Some people weren’t so lucky. Less than ten miles away, in the southeastern suburb cities (yes, Dallas is big) tornadoes started striking. A tornado at night is so much more frightening, because it is almost impossible to see. There are some photos of the funnels touching down, at least two taken by the light of things exploding behind it. There were estimates of over 140 homes so completely destroyed they were almost vaporized. One of The Husband’s friends at work had his home so severely damaged they may never be able to go back. I don’t know the final death toll, but it has to be at least a dozen. My heart bleeds for those families whose homes were destroyed and even more for those who lost loved ones. It’s bad enough that anyone should have to suffer such losses, but for it to happen the day after the happiest and most blessed day of the year is adding insult to injury. May God comfort and be with them.

But in every disaster there are spots of unbelievable kindness. Within hours of the disaster volunteer search and rescue teams were out looking for trapped survivors – both human and animal. A vet was offering free boarding for the pets of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed until they could get things together. A storage company offered the storm’s victims a free month of storage for what they could salvage. Ordinary citizens not only pitched in to help search but brought armloads of donations, including gift cards. Texas has always been a can-do, help your neighbor kind of state and this proves it yet again.

Tornadoes are a part of life in this part of the world. I remember a couple of years ago – and The Husband was deployed overseas this time too – I was sitting in my office (also known as the guest bedroom) trying to work. It was a grey, overcast spring day (my favorite kind) and gradually I became aware that the sirens were not only going off, but had been doing so for quite a while. Frankly I was annoyed at the noise, because it made it hard to concentrate. Finally I realized what those sirens meant and, never having been very bright, ran outside to see if I could spot anything. There was nothing visible other than low, thick grey clouds.

That day they say there were nineteen tornadoes dancing through the metroplex area, damaging or destroying all they touched. The best analogy I can offer is that of a heedless two year old stamping merrily around a garden – one foot here, another there, without regard to the helpless flowers underfoot. And don’t feel too safe no matter where you live – meteorologists say tornadoes can occur anywhere in the world, even if over eighty percent happen in the southern central part of the United States.

Yes, tornadoes are part of life in this part of the world, but as a seventh generation Texan I wouldn’t live anywhere else.