What Weather Is, Cont’d

This morning, I stepped out into Florida. The air was warm and moist. Ambling along the street, peeling off my layers, I stopped and sniffed: the rising temperatures had unlocked the smells of the woods and pasture to either side. I was still in Virginia, but it was hot as summer. It felt as good as forgiveness.

Later, on an afternoon stroll (my days seem to be divided between walking and writing here), I noticed the breeze had stopped and the air stood muggy and panting. Then, continuing down the hill, I saw leaves falling, then felt a sharp, cool breeze where there had been utter stillness a second before. Then another gust. A little farther, I saw low clouds sweeping over a farmhouse, turning everything white.

I ended my walk there and hurried back, made nervous by the dark clouds on the horizon. The temperature continued plunging as I went: by the time I returned to VCCA had gone from 72 to 52. Now it is 42 and pouring (for you Celsius nerds out there, that’s a drop from 22 to 5 degrees).

What is weather? On the one hand, it’s nothing more than fodder for small talk, given how protected we are from the climate. On the other hand, it alters the tenor of our days with a severity that can perhaps only be compared to our own health. Walking back to the residency, I heard dogs bellowing at the coming storm; through the driving rain now, I can hear sirens wailing. Were the dogs simply barking or the sirens simply wailing I wouldn’t make anything of it, but with the boiling clouds and the thick, muffling rain, the sounds become ominous.

Weather can be difficult to replicate in fiction. Sometimes it is hard to separate the weather in your story or novel from your own mood and/or what you see outside your window. I just realized the other day that I had set six months of unfolding action in one single, unchanging season: I had been so bewitched by the emotional resonance of autumn that I had kept a fall wind blowing throughout the pages, without allowing winter to arrive. And that, more than anything, is what weather is not: under our control. In ten minutes, I’m going to have to sprint from my office back to the residence hall in sleety misery. It’s crucial to have your characters be surprised by weather too, something that can be easy to forget, when you, as the author, are necessarily the weather, the weatherman, and the kid rejoicing at a snow day, all at one time.