Tag: storm

Friday Night Haiku #100

Dancing through the air,

A thousand unique snowflakes;

Alone in a crowd.

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100 Friday Night Haiku! Took me a while!!

They’re not all winners, but if you enjoyed even a single one of them, then it has been a worthwhile endeavor. Thanks for dropping by!

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“Powder” and “Winter’s Portrait”

It’s the silence,

The deadening of sound,

That takes away the sense of danger,

As Winter slowly tightens her embrace,

Tender as a mother,

Unyielding like a vice,

And unrepentant in her actions,

Yet still we stand in wonder,

As the powder dusts us like icing,

And continues to fall.

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Winter is cold hard steel,

Angry and Blue.

Winter is warm marshmallows,

An innocent joy.

Winter is wet and miserable,

And cuts you to your soul.

But always

Always.

Winter is beautiful.

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Triple Digits

It’s not so much

That it’s

Hot,

(Well,

I mean,

It Is)

But it’s the

Humidity

That

Drains

The body,

The mind,

The soul,

Until there is

Nothing left

But

Sweat

And

Despair,

And all that remains is

A dream;

The cool touch of

Ice water,

The gentle kiss of

Air Conditioning

And the

blessed relief

Of a Summer Storm.

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Tempus Fugit

Today was one of those days where nothing went according to plan. I woke up late for starters, then managed to accomplish almost nothing I set out to do today.

That’s life at Camp, unfortunately. Something always crops up. Today we were supposed to get the boats prepped so we can put them in the water tomorrow. However, storms over the weekend messed up our power, and a large part of the Day was running around trying to do damage control.

I also had to go up to the dentist to pay off a bill, which I did do, but the reason for me actually having to physically go and be present at the dentist (problems with the card I wanted to pay with) were not resolved.

I also still have to pack for my vacation which starts on Saturday. :q

There is still so much to do before Summer Camp starts, so much to do before we go on vacation. And there is only so much time and energy to go round.

It didn’t help that we started off with a storm this morning, which felt nice, but was almost immediately replaced with an all-day outdoor sauna. Everything was sticky and moist and swampy and steamy and I just felt gross, which doesn’t help my productivity.

At one point I walked into one of the maintenance buildings to get a hose for someone, and I had to navigate past a snow-blower to do it. It felt, to me, only a few weeks had passed since we had removed the blower from the mini-tractor which it mounts to, only a few weeks from when we were battling snow and slush to sweating profusely and fighting off swarms of biting bugs.

Where, I wondered, just had the time gone?

Of course we’ve been pretty busy this spring, and we have actually accomplished quite a lot in our “off” season. And yet, once again, Summer has snuck up on us, and we’re left racing to keep up.

Still. It’s job security, i suppose. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

And then I found out the spigot I was supposed to hook the hose up to has a crack in the pipe and has to be repaired. -_-

Put it on the list….

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Watch

We had a doozy of a storm roll up on the Outer Banks today. The winds are normally pretty steady out here, but they were strong today, with gusts up to 40mph. Not great conditions, but these houses are usually built with hurricane-force winds in mind. The whole week I have been feeling the house shake with the wind; the flexibility built into the structure doing its job.

Today the house was shaking a little more than usual, and that, combined with some heavy downpour, meant that we decided to stay inside for most of today.

It was as evening began to approach that we got the alert:

Tornado Watch. Please move to appropriate shelter.

Hurricanes are one thing, but Tornados are quite another. Fortunately most of the family had left this morning, leaving only 8 of us in the house. The Watch also had a very short time-frame, less than half an hour. So we relocated into the movie room on the lower level of the house. A large space with no windows. It was located against two outside walls, so not ideal, but it was the best we could do. My wife pulled up a streaming weather report whilst I kept Thomas occupied with an episode of Daniel Tiger on my kindle.

A Tornado Watch just means the conditions are right for a tornado to form, it doesn’t mean there actually is one. The storm passed right overhead, and we lost power for all of 5 seconds when a bolt of lightning struck nearby, but that was about the worst of it. My father-in-law even managed to put in an order for dinner at a restaurant about 10 minutes south of us, so that’s how localized the storm was, and how swiftly it passed. It was definitely frightening on one level, but as Shakespeare once put it; it was “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Whilst it came to naught, the aftermath was a sight to see. As the moon rose over the Atlantic Ocean, you could see the storm head out to sea, periodically illuminated with spectacular cloud-to-cloud lightning. Even as I came to bed this evening (just before I began to write this) you could still see it, angry storm clouds on the horizon, only visible by virtue of the sporadic bursts of lightning, and the bold silvery light of a moon just past full illuminating a ghostly path out to sea, in a night full with the clearest stars I have seen in a long while. It was truly awe-inspiring, and very beautiful.

I can’t begin to imagine having to live in a place like this, so vulnerable to weather events like that, and on a regular basis. I also have trouble reconciling the idea of something so dangerous, so potentially destructive being able to produce scenery as beautiful as it did. The weird juxtaposition of beauty and danger seems to be a hallmark of the Outer Banks and it makes you really respect the sort of people who call this place home all year round.

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