Health, Nature, Stories, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Wind

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It was 75 degrees here yesterday, a nice temperature except for the wind that blew all afternoon.  We have wind here. Today it blew steadily from the west all afternoon at 28 mph, with gusts up to 39.  We had dust storms in town. My office building is heated with steam heat, and it has not yet been shut off.  There is no air conditioning because the hot water still in the pipes. If I opened my west facing window to cool down, I was deafened by the sound of the wind blowing in and scattering all the papers on my desk. I have coworkers with asthma and allergies who suffer when these winds blow like this.  There is no containing the wind.

Tell stories or poems about the wind.

 

68 thoughts on “Wind”

  3. wind story #1

    my date with debbie to downtown chicago when my kids were 2&4 i think has been mentioned here a couple times before but it was so memorable i love telling it again
    i’m going to try voice recognition so excuse my random capital letters

    we were downtown by the artist étude on a beautiful July afternoon listening to musicians play in the park and enjoying the people watching when we decided it was time to head back to the train and out to the suburbs where her folks live… Walking back down Jackson Street for about eight blocks to the train station I looked up to see off in the distance a cloud bank rolling in and taking away the buildings one block after another after another coming at us at a rate that was certain to arrive within one minute… We were still four blocks from the train station and I pointed to the site and told Debbie we should find a place for shelter and we begin heading to the nearest building grabbing a kid each I put the four-year-old on my neck and threw the two-year-old on her neck and as I did this the wind it was such a gale force that it began blowing us backwards… The newspaper stands and garbage cans blew over and down the road a person who was walking by a half a block up came rolling by and as we tried to get through the revolving doors in one of the office buildings the doors got jammed with stuff blowing off the buildings and getting caught in the doors as they revolved
    It was all over in one minute and we survived but it was the strangest experience of being involved in a flat wind phenomenon that I have ever been in

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  5. wind story #2

    i had a rare moment when reflection was the goal and a bing a vw bus and a tent on route to the north shore was all i needed

    drive up
    looked for a cool spot, found it and set up my tent rounded up firewood and noticed it was really elevated distinctly where i was hanging out
    looked to be the highest point and uniquely set up so you could see for a long distance in all directions
    got my vw with the door open getting ready to start my fire. it always amazes me how long it takes to make dinner when camping
    it’s hours to end up with hot dogs and beans but the show must go on. my fire building style calls for a tee pee of the tiny twigs making a dimmer plate sized arrangement surrounded by a log cabin the size of the 18” logs i had split to make the firewood pile. i got that already and you know how you notice the weather changing while your standing in it? clouds blew in the air smelled of rain and the temp dropped 15 degrees in 3 minutes. it got my attention
    i went up to the top of the hill but i had to push real hard because the wind was in my face
    when i got to the top i couldn’t stand up there because it was just too strong a wind
    get behind a big tree to block it and watch the branches from tree tops all around bend and sway as far as they could like a movie with the witch in the woods
    the car was down the hill and i started towards it and the rain started
    hard rain in big drops that hurt with the wind make a weapon of it
    i jumped in the van and was drenched. it was cold and blowing and the scenic spot i picked in the sunshine did have serious drawbacks in this situation so i could have left but my tent and tools and supplies were out there getting pounded. i should have stayed after waiting it out but it just pissed me off that i misjudged the spot so badly that i left and found a different much less dramatic spot that worked for me that night
    wet me wet

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  6. hey renee they sell those free standing room air conditioners for about $350 at retail
    you have this happen every year
    just buy it and caragorize it as office supplies

    bet the governor has ac

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    1. What will happen is that the University will shut down the boiler for the heating system on May 15th, and then we will have a cold snap and there will be no heat and we will all freeze and wrap up in coats and blankets in our offices.

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  8. My Great Uncle Pete Krueger saw Jesus by the windmill. He also saw Jesus in the bedroom closet. My grandmother, Pete’s sister, believed it was a miracle. She didn’t know Pete was a secret drinker.

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  9. The National Weather Service here uses the word “Breezy” to describe the winds we had yesterday. That is not how I define breezy. One of the weather forecasters says there are regional variations, and that to the NWS, breezy and windy mean the same thing.

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  11. I’ll think of something eventually, but these lyrics come to mind from a favorite Judy Collins song:

    Blow you old blue Northern, blow my love to me.
    He’s driving in tonight from California…

    And several of you may remember this:

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  12. A few years ago we drove to visit an Aunt in Mississippi. On the way back we stopped at a rest stop in Kansas. It was 110 degrees and the wind was blowing about 30-40 MPH and it was a hot wind and it just wore you out to stand there. Saw some guys on motorcycles stop and I just couldn’t imagine how hot that must be.

    Have had some good T-storms and wind, but nothing stands out. Trees down, machine shed roof windows blown out (those green fiberglass translucent things- they get old and brittle) But nothing too crazy.

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      1. We never had a windmill. Partially, we’re down in a valley with fresh water springs. (We explain that’s why we’re so far off the road, because the settlers came to the water) and partially dad always said you’d want the windmill pumping in the evening when doing chores and cattle were drinking and the wind always dies down about 5:00 PM.
        He talked about threshing crews would set up down around the barns and either it was too sheltered to get much wind or the wind always died out about the time they started.

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      1. Many years ago when my son was in his teens he spent waaaaay toooooo much time watching the Comedy Channel. He was doing that one day when he was supposed to be doing his chores. I came roaring up the stairs ready to give him a piece of my mind and take away some privileges. He was roaring with laughter and told me “This is the funniest thing I have ever seen.” I looked. There was Carol Burnett and Company playing out “Went with the Wind.” It was the only thing he could have been watching that would get him off the hook. Of course, Carol was/is my hero. I still like his taste in humor.

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  16. Forty some odd years ago, I was camping in the BWCA with a bunch of friends. On our fourth day in the wilderness a storm blew in. Tempting as it was to seek shelter in our tents from the rain that was pelting down on us, we didn’t dare for fear of being crushed by trees that were falling down all around us. That was one cold, wet and miserable night, and portaging out of there the following day wasn’t a whole lot of fun either because of all the downed trees.

    It was on that same trip that we visited Dorothy Molter in her cabin on a tiny island in Knife Lake.

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    1. I’d be surprised if Chris doesn’t have a wind story from the BWCA knowing how much time he has spent up there.

      Which reminds me of paddling on Ima Lake on a fairly windy day. My paddling partner on that day happened to be Bob Jackson. I had been in a car accident a couple of weeks prior to the trip and still had a bruised right shoulder. I’m not a strong paddler under the best of circumstances, so whoever my partner was on any given day had their work cut out for them. As we were struggling along against the wind Bob quipped, I think they should have named this I’m an Ocean rather than Ima Lake.

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  17. A wind joke: a Minnesotan visiting South Dakota was barely able to stand to pump gas because a blustery wind was buffeting him about. He complained to the kid at the cash register of the convenience store. “Can’t help it,” said the kid. “Montana blows and MINNESOTA SUCKS and we just get stuck in the middle.”

    Another: A traveler in the Dakotas is trying to pump gas, but a fierce wind from the west is hitting so hard he has to hang on to the pumps to keep from blowing away like Dorothy’s farmhouse. “Criminetly,” he yells to the kid at the cash register. “Does it ALWAYS blow like this?” “Awww, no,” says the kid. “Sometimes she blows from the east.”

    Heard these while traveling in South Dakota.

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  18. OT – Husband is cooking dinner tonight, so I have the luxury of just lazing about when I would normally be cooking up a storm. Since most baboons are readers, I thought I’d share this:
    “Amy Tan’s book recommendations for surviving confinement:

    For parents of restless children: “How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention,” John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren

    For the curious: “Summer World,” Bernd Heinrich

    For remembering the natural world: “Devotions,” Mary Oliver

    For thinking about how we got into this mess: “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall,” Mark Moffett

    For a good time: “Nothing to See Here,” Kevin Wilson

    For the immune system: “Undo It!,” Dean Ornish, M.D. and Anne Ornish”

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  19. This summer that YA and I went to the Dakotas, we went to Crazyhorse one night and the heads another night to watch the light shows. On the way back from Mount Rushmore, we could see big streaks of lightning in the distance and a little bit of rumbling and it was clear by the time we got back to the campground that there was going to be a big storm. Luckily our tent was smack in the middle of our campsite and on a slight hill so We didn’t get wet, but the wind was so fierce that there were a couple of times I thought it might pull up the tent stakes and blow our tent and us in it away.

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  20. Yesterday morning an ill wind came.
    Blew your picture right outta the picture frame.
    Even blew the candle out from underneath the flame.
    Yesterday morning, an ill wind came.

    – John Prine

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  21. Remembering this from a children’s poetry book:

    Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti

    Who has seen the wind?
    Neither I nor you:
    But when the leaves hang trembling,
    The wind is passing through.

    Who has seen the wind?
    Neither you nor I:
    But when the trees bow down their heads,
    The wind is passing by.

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  26. This poem by Ted Hughes is full of strong and evocative imagery.

    Wind

    This house has been far out at sea all night,
    The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
    Winds stampeding the fields under the window
    Floundering black astride and blinding wet

    Till day rose; then under an orange sky
    The hills had new places, and wind wielded
    Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
    Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

    At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
    The coal-house door. Once I looked up –
    Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
    The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

    The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
    At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
    The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
    Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

    Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
    That any second would shatter it. Now deep
    In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
    Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

    Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
    And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
    Seeing the window tremble to come in,
    Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

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