Thar It Blows
On the island, weather’s always a big deal. And a favorite topic of conversation. We’re too hot or too cold. We grouse about too much or not enough rain. Our far northern clime dictates the seasons, each one distinguished by a particular year’s prevailing weather. But more simply put, they’re either too short or too long. As the saying goes: “Ah, when spring comes, we know winter can’t be far behind.”
Notorious for our fog, we’re also susceptible to nor’easters, squalls, and, nearly annually, close calls with hurricanes. Wind is definitely no bit player here.
Daily, the island’s sailors, lobstermen and just about anyone else who relies on the sea for their livelihood or recreation must pay attention to the wind. Even devoted landlubbers tend to take note, wondering: Will today’s wind blow out the threatening fog bank or sock us in? Will it heave ashore a spring tide’s flood? What will it do to the island bridge’s pitch and sway? Though possibly chillier, northwest winds are generally favored. As poet Philip Booth declared: “A northwest wind day. Large scale clarities.”
Forever in cahoots with the tides, wind can, with a quick turn, stir up serious trouble. Reaching into its trick bag of shenanigans, it routinely treats us to winter blowdowns, blocked roads, snapped power lines. Personally, I can attest to the wind’s might. A few years back, a summer storm briefly morphing into a microburst heaved five huge, uprooted spruce trees onto our house.
Seldom are strong winds of minor consequence. Elsewhere, too. In Italy, there’s allegedly more crime when hot scirocco winds blow. In the south of France, it’s believed people are driven to despair and breakdown by winter’s unrelenting mistral wind. Historical anecdotes note how pioneer women “lost their minds to perverse madness” as they huddled in earthern soddies and wind unceasingly blew over the frozen midwestern flatlands. And of course we all know what happened in the wind-ravaged Dust Bowl of the Great Depression, a time when it seemed an enormous soul-sucking wind blew over the entire country.
I was born in and have lived most of my years in a city known for its wind – Chicago: The Windy City. Never mind that the origin of that moniker derives from Chicago’s penchant for “windy politicians,” most recently among them our ousted Elvis-wannabe governor now known nationally as Blago, who’s latest reincarnation appears to be the pitch man for pistachios in TV ads.
This year, I had to leave the island early and have spent most of October in Chicago. For much of the month, the wind has been well-behaved, and almost, given how parched the ground, polite to a fault. It hasn’t blown in much rain but then neither has it prematurely yanked leaves from trees ablaze with autumn color.
This past week, however, we were back in more familiar territory. The Windy City lived up to its name.
As part of a wide-spread storm muscling its way across the Midwest, wind blasted the city. Sustained winds reached 40 mph. Wind gusts topped twice that. House roofs were lifted, power lines snapped. Uprooted trees squashed small cars, blocked streets. The wind stripped billboards and spun heavy metal street signs like tops. For an entire morning, planes were grounded, countless flights cancelled. The lake did its best riff of the Atlantic. Happily, I was able to sit out most of the drama at my desk at home.
But from personal experience, I know that in the city, just crossing the street in such wind can seem an act of courage, particularly in those spots called the “city’s windiest,” the results of downdrafts in skyscraper-made city canyons. In one such place, a young woman commuter about to cross a wind-strafed bridge over the Chicago River ducked at the last minute into a building lobby to remove her earrings. She told TV reporters after, “they were the most valuable thing on me and I know how that wind can tug.” Such wind really defines a “bad hair day,” too.
Sometimes winds have names. In Rome, for example – in addition to the blistery hot African scirocco, there’s the westerly sea breeze ponentino, and the steely northerly tramontana. Given their importance and all the mischief they can stir up, I have to wager our island winds have names too, albeit with fewer vowels than their Italian cousins. If Chicago’s winds have names, I don’t know them. Probably something meteorologically technical. Admittedly, all I listen for is “wind off the lake” so I know whether to grab a sweater. But last week, our winds, via Twitter and YouTube, earned names. “Chiclone.” “Windpocalypse.”
Such labels might suggest doom or chaos. And indeed perhaps they did for those with pancaked cars, lost roofs or missed flights to something important. But Chicagoans, like islanders, face their weather with a hefty resolve. In fact, it may be the extremes that appeal to us most, bestowing upon us some kind of perverse bragging rights. “Everyone in Chicago is used to foul weather,” a man told a Loop reporter, even as neither of them could barely stand upright in the windy gusts. For others, the windstorm simply boiled down to possible threats to upcoming Halloween festivities. Not that folks didn’t recognize inherent danger. Said one woman, “With this type of wind, I just hope nobody gets hurt by things falling from buildings, you know, debris or flying pumpkins.” Hmm, flying pumpkins?
That’s not exactly what I had in mind when wondering this week why it is that though I’ve long lived in a city which in more ways than one lives up to its “windy” reputation, it’s on the island where I truly notice the wind. The ways, even without a weatherman’s report, I’m aware of its approach, its announced arrival in wind-drawn wave patterns on the Bay, in halyards banging in the harbor, or in the uppermost branches of trees encircling our house. Is it because Chicago is more fortified against the wind? That the city and we in it are less exposed? (One way to impress visitors is to lead them via heated, underground pedway from building to building stretching across most of the Loop) Or that here, the wind's somehow often of lesser consequence, notwithstanding cancelled flights gumming up the works at our country’s busiest airport?
And, too, in Chicago, there’s an entire city at the ready with precautions and warnings. Not that all of them are what they could be. Like the signs city workers haul onto sidewalks in winter when the ice that sheathes some skyscrapers starts to melt and chunks of it hurtle toward ground. Last December, while walking with three of my young granddaughters to a Sunday matinee of “The Christmas Carol,” we came upon them: “Watch for Falling Ice.” And all three girls, dutifully following directions did just that – they looked up. Probably not the precaution city officials had in mind.
Still, that shouldn’t rule out the possibility of future wind-related warnings. Maybe something essential. Maybe “Caution: Flying Pumpkins.”