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The Weather, Sideways

Not too many people work outdoors anymore: Of course, we have construction crews and surveyors and ski instructors and urban mail carriers, but majority rules, and the TV weather forecast tells us more about the safety of the twice-daily commute than about a decent chance to go to haul or cut wood.

As I scribble these notes, we sit out here in the gale. It’s raining hard in Penobscot Bay, snowing hard inland, sketchy and dangerous down the Interstate, and nobody in her right mind crosses the water except the pilot boat. The telephone is ringing steadily with off-island people worrying on our behalf, or about their camps and cottages, or just wishing they were here to see their beloved summer ocean in its white winter upheaval. This afternoon, it is nearly full dark by 4 p.m.--no moon, no sunset, no twilight in this nor’easter, and the wind is definitely picking up. Winter-fishing boat owners may not sleep well tonight, and linemen won’t either. We lamely watch television weather staff in the streets of Bangor and at the truck stop in Kennebunk, reporting on applesauce falling from the sky and ice causing treachery beneath, until we inevitably lose the television signal. The power’s just fine--we just can’t get network television in bad weather at my location, and I don’t have “the satellite.” The main concern of the weathermen and puddle-jumping, sleet-eating reporters in their L.L. Bean coats is vertical: what is descending from the sky and how high or deep it piles up on, or floods, the surface. Their audience worries about the weather in terms of up and down.

On the other hand, we reckon in weather as it happens horizontally, laterally, sideways—not how buried our feet, but how battered our faces. How hard will the wind blow and from which direction? The wind will make the decisions when transportation, by boat or by small airplane, is marginal already. The wind will matter to the fishermen, to the power company, and to anybody moving truck freight on the once-monthly-in-the-winter state ferry (and that would be me).

Forecasters like the term “nor’easter,” I suspect, because it sounds old-fashioned and vaguely New England-y, somehow maritime—I won’t say “quaint” or “nautical” because I just can’t bring myself to use either of those words seriously anywhere—but to most folks a “nor’easter” is just another round of windblown precip, a bad few days, and the specifics hardly matter. It all makes for a nasty commute. “Stay off the roads if you can,” we are advised, and, “The turnpike speed has been reduced,” and, of course, “No line is safe to touch, ever.”

Here on the island we wonder: Just how much easterly will there be in that nor’easter? The big colorful blobs on the weather radar make it look like it should be coming at us from the south, but if this thing is offshore, the winds will come about and hit us from the east, the water side. That could be a nice mess. Our harbor faces east. Matinicus has a sturdy breakwater, and it takes quite a hurricane to truly threaten the moored lobster boats, assuming their lines are good, but between the end of the breakwater and Wheaton Island is the harbor’s entrance. That gap is seemingly wide enough for the Queen Mary on a calm summer morning but a right regular washing machine, and a tiny, rock-studded one at that, in a hard easterly blow. Scylla and Charybdis.

Around here you can ask one of the guys the weather and he might say something like, “It’s supposed to come around sou’west” or whatever, and from the direction alone one can supposedly extrapolate. Knowing only the direction (and the time of year), the expected temperature, humidity, precipitation and fog can be estimated with a reasonable degree of accuracy, given a few decades experience and no big consequence to figuring wrong by 12 hours or so.

It doesn’t always work, but neither does the more advanced technology.

They all say the guys from back in Grampy’s day could really forecast the weather, but I think every generation says that. Although I’m not sure I buy the story that Ol’ Man Emery could tell you what it would do six days out, the modern methods seem little better, and by that I mean that if I hear the expression “the computer models don’t agree” one more time...

Old or not so old, the waterlogged weather sages don’t talk about cumulonimbus clouds or atmospheric inversions or advection fog: They talk in directional terms. Out of the south means damp, and in the summer that means fog. From the northwest, in the winter, means Canada is moving in for a while. Wind direction also matters to each individual, in simple terms, like which trees are at risk, whether the roof will leak, whose mooring or antenna or trap-shop needs checking, which electricity and telephone wires are most exposed. We learn to pay attention. It’s worse than that: Some of us jump at storm noises like a spooked cat.

The other day I drove some friends to the island airstrip to board the Cessna 206 in a strong wind, but that was okay. It was “flyable” (that’s a meteorological term)--especially with Alaska bush pilot Mike in command--because the hard wind was straight out of the north. Our one airstrip runs north-south. A crosswind at even 1- knots less than we had that day would have been an entirely different deal, and probably not flyable, at least here. Direction matters.

Being here is not the danger. I know people in various mainland places who assume the worst for us when the forecast is scary. They think we ought to get off this rock. Staying put, we’re fine. Out of milk, very likely, but fine. Trying to leave would be a problem. Cancel the dentist and for goodness sakes don’t go and be having your heart attack though, for here you will stay, for better or for worse.

Even when the conditions are nowhere near scary, boat trips can range from good fun to a lot of damned work, and it often has something to do with the direction of the wind—either locally or when some big weather is “going by us outside.” No matter the real direction, as I climb aboard my husband always grins and reassures me by saying, “It’s okay, it’ll be behind you.” Sure.