The sirens sang their song today. We’re accustomed to the sirens on the first Wednesday of the month, when they’re tested. They wail for an interminable interval, as if you don’t get the point right away. I mean, no one thinks “that siren’s been howling for three minutes now. Wonder if something’s up.” The minute it spins up an ancient childhood fear bolts up from your gut, an instinct honed by childhood viewings of The Wizard of Oz. You know that one day you will be Dorothy Gale, staring in terror at a distant twister scribbling across the land, drawing near, mindless, implacable.
Today was not the first Wednesday. You stop, startled: this is not a drill.
I’ve probably been through 50 siren episodes in my lifetime. Never saw a funnel, alas. You say: alas? Yes, I’m one of those idiots who hears the siren and thinks “cool, let’s go outside and see how bad it looks.” It’s thrilling. It’s dangerous. You want to hoot and holler at the wind, because you feel alive in the face of peril. Modern man has few opportunities to confront the great forces of life, and you haven’t felt this sense of mad tempt-the-gods bravado since you used that salsa that was a week beyond its BEST BY date.
The siren indicates a Tornado Warning, which was preceded by a Tornado Watch. Everyone ignores Tornado Watches. I’m supposed to watch? Isn’t that your job? Doesn’t every TV station have a guy who’s been waiting for months for the chance to interrupt this program, his jacket off to indicate the seriousness of meteorological conditions? It’s the height of their profession. They get to gesture broadly at red wounds smeared over the map and warn us all of the peril en route, unaware that half the audience is peeved about this because they cut into Judge Judy. And it was a good one. She was yelling at someone! They totally deserved it!
Anyway, Tornado Watches need more detail, if we’re to take them serious.
Level 1: Conditions make tornadoes possible. Meaning, it’s summer, on earth
Level 2: Someone forty miles away from you got his hair mussed by a sudden gust
Level 3: A wispy tendril has been seen from the bottom of a cloud
Level 4: The guy on TV has his jacket on, but you get the sense he might whip it off if the barometric pressure drops six degrees
Level 5: The sun has been blotted out by swirling shingles and a cow just flew through the air, plaintively bleating, so let’s proceed from the “watch” phase to the incoherent panic phase
I was at the office the wail of doom began. Everyone fluttered about, wondering whether to leave or stay. A prerecorded voice told us to “evacuate the perimeter,” which sounds as if the enemy forces have broken through our defenses, and we were told “to follow the instructions of our safety coordinator.” I looked around for a co-worker who had quickly donned a uniform with a special hat, using glowsticks to guide us to safety - Oh, he’d waited for this moment, the chance for petty unquestioned authority - but turns out we don’t have one. Everyone filtered out down the steps, except for some guys manning the copy desk, who had the grim resolve of the boiler stokers on the Titanic.
I stood by the window, now renamed “the perimeter” forever in my mind, and watched the clouds, bruised and surly, sweep past. After a few minutes the siren fell and did not rise again. The sky was blue, and the world sparkled with sunshine and fresh rain. The refugees filtered back into the building with the same excited chatter you remember from school, when the fire or twister drills let everyone escape from the prison of the classroom.
The meteorologist put his jacket back on and the TV signal returned to Judge Judy, already in progress. The drama was done. But the rest of the day had a tremulous zest, didn’t it? As Churchill said: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Summer was suddenly here, and we were reminded of the part we forget in winter when we dream of dulcet days. There’s danger in summer, and we’re a long, long way from the truce of autumn.
I think it's one of the more interesting things about living in The States. Everyone has their own weather to deal with. In the Midwestern section, it's tornadoes. In the East, hurricanes. In the West, just the Total Wrath of God in various forms. Droughts bring wild fires; constant rain brings flooding. Up here in CT, we've had hurricanes, wild fires, droughts, a few tornadoes, but nothing "constant." When I lived in The Tidewater area of VA, I had to ride out a number of hurricanes, but survived all of them. Now I have dreams of living in Japan, but the idea of earthquakes sends shivers right now.
Yes, the TV meteorologists love this stuff. I call it a "weathergasm" when they go into full-blown, everybody-panic-now mode.