Dear friends,
The East Wind woke me in the early hours of the morning, a keening devil whining through the cracks. It snuck in around the front door and whistled through the attic in a key at odds with the low tones of the overwrought wind chimes.
Too unnerved to sleep, I tiptoed downstairs to the front door to watch the wind blow. You cannot see the wind itself, only how it interacts with what it encounters. This wind grabbed at the branches of our red cedar and swept hard pellets of sleet into minor drifts. It knocked over a sturdy wrought-iron porch rocker. It grabbed the neighbors' chimney cap and sent it flying—even as it ushered in temperatures in the mid-teens.
The wind blew from the east/northeast, the most punishing of winter wind directions here. There was no venturing out in such a blast. Who knew what unwanted objects this cruel wind would toss at you? Daggers of cold. I watched the leaves curl up on a rhododendron and considered other big winds I've known: Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, a sandstorm on the Oregon Coast, a derecho in Washington, D.C.
The lights flickered, but the power stayed on. The wind kept blowing.
From my warm bed I read up on prevailing winds. I knew these facts once, from a pass/fail meteorology class I nearly flunked in college. Not because I was incurious about the material—I understand but cannot explain the Coriolis effect—but because I rarely went to class. It met every Wednesday, right before an editorial-writing seminar that took place around a table in our professor's office. There were only six of us and we were required to read our editorials out loud, so there was no hiding or skipping out of the seminar. Each Wednesday afternoon I found myself in the computer lab too late, continuing to refine my opinions well after it was time to print out my piece and walk over to meteorology class in the geology building. Do you also hear the whir of the dot matrix printer blowing in from the past?
One thing I remember: A wind is always named for the direction from which it blows.
Even as the wind rattled the storm windows, I read up on the romantic names of the seasonal winds of the world. The Zephyr and Chinook; the Haboob and the Berg; the Santa Ana and the Diablo. I stumbled upon an article that explained how in 1997, meteorologists in the Pacific Northwest wanted to call our bitter winter wind "the Coho," but the name failed to gain traction. I found a chart that showed the average prevailing winds in my city each month. Aha, I thought. Spring arrives when the prevailing winds begin blowing from the south. That is why it feels different.
Pilots and engineers know this, of course. So do architects and crane operators and wildland firefighters and surfers and anglers and boat captains. And birds in flight. Birds could teach us everything there is to know about wind speed and direction. Perhaps in birdsong they, too, have names as romantic as Levante or Sirocco.
The wind continued to blow, worrying at the house. I considered all the verbs associated with winds. Wind rustles and knocks and gusts. It carves and polishes and chisels. It whips waves and ripples grasses. It whimpers. It sighs.
Naming the verbs lulled me back to sleep. The power stayed on. The trees stayed upright. The wind blew.
Yours,
Erika
The storm knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of Oregonians this week. Winter weather conditions killed at least 12 people in the state, including three deaths from electrocution from a fallen power line in Portland and multiple deaths from hypothermia. Winds and ice also downed hundreds of trees, closing roads and damaging or destroying homes and cars.