And in weather news. . . .

So when we got up this morning, after the tea and coffee were made, the PP said, "I want to know what happened with the tornadoes." So I went outside and got the paper, brought it in, and as I was pulling it out of its plastic baggy he said, "So does it say, 'Tornadoes slam Upstate'?"
I kind of looked at him, because what it said was TORNADOES SLAM UPSTATE.*
Note this part in particular:

Trained weather spotters reported the first tornado on the ground in Clemson at 2:54 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. The tornado "came across the stadium and the intramural field and took out a couple of light poles and then blew over trees in front of the ESSO Club moving into town," said Marvin Carmichael, Clemson’s director of Financial Aid. Tornado sirens at Clemson University were activated and the CU Safe Alert text-messaging system warned people to seek shelter, said Clemson spokeswoman Robin Denny.

I would not want to disagree with Robin Denny, who makes it all sound so smooth, but I need to add a couple of amendments.

You see, this CU Safe Alert system has had some issues. For a while, they had it set so that the sirens went every time there was lightning "in the area." Last spring break, when I was at the beach, I got a series of 10 text messages telling me to seek shelter from Clemson lightning.

And let me describe the siren: it is a regulation siren that goes for a while, leaving you to wonder what the disaster is. (This is a siren that was put in place after the VA Tech shootings.) Then a scary recorded voice identifies the disaster and uniformly advises everyone to "seek shelter immediately." That voice, however, is not at the same volume as the siren, which means that in (say) a classroom, you can hear the siren, but not the explanation.

I note this because, in fact, I was teaching at 2:54 p.m., when the storm and sirens came. We were (surprise) discussing a poem when the sirens went, and I realized to my dismay that I had no idea what to do. My first thought:

+ Is this yet another lightning warning, so we should do nothing?

Then when a student checked for a text message and learned of the tornado warning, I thought:

+ Does the university have a plan for serious weather that I did not know about?

+ Should we use the stairs to go downstairs (my classroom was on the fourth of four floors)--stairs that are outdoors and exposed to those same elements from which we were supposed to be seeking shelter?

+ Should we line up in the hallways with our heads between our knees, or should we seek shelter under our desks, like if there was nuclear fallout on the way?

+ Will something horrible befall my students if I make the wrong choice?

Looking around to see what other classes on the hall were doing and seeing that they were continuing, I decided to go ahead with class, but I could see the anxiety on my students' faces and frankly the discussion sucked.

Afterwards, I learned that most of my colleagues who were not in class at the time were huddled in the office of the person with the best view of the tornado as it ripped across the stadium and the intramural fields, checking out the view. At some point, it apparently occurred to them that perhaps the 8th floor of an 8-story building--and by a window--might not be the place to be, so everyone took the double-helix stairs down to the basement.

And after that, I learned about the damage on campus and in the neighborhoods around campus.

But me and my students, we were still talking about Yeats.

Back in my office, I saw the "all clear" signal, which had come through at about 3:10. So I went ahead and convened my 3:30 class. During that class my students were seriously spooked, since they (unlike my first class) knew that there had been a tornado, and were on the lookout for more. "That tree is horizontal," one of them said at one point, looking out the window. "There is debris flying in a circle." It was also raining and windy as all get out, and I figured the likelihood of another tornado was small, so we kept going.

But after that class, I went back to my office to find another "all clear" signal given at 4:10. There had been no additional siren, no additional text messages warning of danger. So were we not really all clear at 3:10? Had the system malfunctioned?

This morning in my inbox was a message received at 7:49 p.m. but date-stamped at 3:50 p.m., reading, "Tornado Warning: Seek shelter and tune to local media for information." That would explain the 4:10 "all clear"--but why had this message not come through at the time?

Frustrating. And a little scary. I suppose they are working the kinks out, but I hope someone is paying attention.


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* You are going to have to trust me on that one, because the online headline does not match the print headline.

It's not the heat, it's the . . .

well, maybe it is the heat.

I knew I was in trouble when I was driving home from physical therapy at 9:40 a.m. and it was already 90 degrees F.

Luckily, I came up with the brilliant idea to buy one of these. (I am miserly about air conditioning.)

The assembly instructions and I did not get along perfectly, but the thing is put together and working.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

(The downside is that it turns out there is a lot of dust and cathair on my desk, and the nice fan is stirring it all up.)

In shoulder news, I was able to do some of my strengthening exercises today in physical therapy, though not a lot of them. Still, this is progress from Monday, when my PT just stretched me and sent me home.

For Estaminet:

Timothy was right: snow is infrequent in these parts--enough so that the mere prediction can cause school closings. And no one knows how to drive in it: the sheer number of SUVs in ditches when there is a dusting on the ground is amazing. And I am not even going to dignify with a comment the assumption that a four-wheel-drive vehicle is impervious to ice.

I think we got about four inches, but that is based on my eye-balling rather than any official data.

The Blizzard of 2008.

Last night, even before we went to bed (and you know how dorkily early that is), there was about a half an inch of snow on the ground. Overnight, I had snow dreams. It was worse than anticipating Santa: I woke up again and again, and got up to look outside. I could hear heavy sleet at some points, at some points it was nearly silent.

On our morning walk, the Patient Partner and I started noticing something interesting: our city's many bronze statues all had snowmen on their heads. The first ones we saw were on the heads of the pair of students commemorating Sterling High School, the first African American public high school in the county, and we hoped that these snowmen were in the spirit of fun and nothing more. But then we came to Vardry McBee, seated peacefully on his bronze bench, sporting his own fine snowman hat (though his snowman seemed to have lost its arms). Not to be left out, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson also wore a snowman hat (though we had hoped that perhaps someone would have affixed a snowball to his bat). My favorite was Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War hero and holder of a long-nosed miniature snowman along with his spyglass. The snowman adorning Joel Roberts Poinsett, namesake of the poinsettia, must have gone the way of so many, may they melt in peace. Best of all, Nobel laureate Charles H. Townes had one on his head, one on each shoulder, and one in the fold of his hands. Now that's a city father for you!

(Not exactly) Spoleto 3: Tropical Storm Barry.

I knew we were at the coast when I realized that the TV in our hotel room defaults to The Weather Channel. Not that I am complaining: I have been known to be a Weather Channel fan. Blame it on growing up in Tidewater Virginia, I suppose, where I learned early the importance of constantly watching hurricane tracks and projected paths, just in case.

Not that my enduring attention to all things weather makes me prepared. For instance, even after a discussion with the PP about packing rain jackets, did I pack mine? (Do I really have to answer that question?) Luckily, a certain outdoor store became the store where I dropped the most money. We called it the store we visited every day, because the first time we bought sunscreen, the second time my (fabulous) new rain jacket, and the third time lots of brightly-colored ankle socks to wear with my sandals. I even spent more money there than at knit! (I must admit that this is partly because I have bought so much yarn elsewhere of late, and I was trying to be restrained....)

Anyway, the PP and I woke up the morning after our arrival to find ourselves socked in. If you have ever lived at the coast you know what I mean: about 98% humidity, no breeze, spitting rain, gray everywhere you look. We realized then that we needed to get that replacement raincoat right away, and hurricane expert Dr. Lyons confirmed our concern that the weather would only get worse. I never got that distinct low pressure headache that Yarngineer described (I have before, and yow they are intense), but as the day went on, the wind picked up.

We could not help but laugh, though, because the night before we had seen The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht number I had been eager to see ever since I heard Ute Lemper sing songs from it. (Do you know "Alabama Song," which was covered by The Doors? It is from this show.) Anyway, the opera has as a sizable plot device a hurricane, and so we had spent some time during the turn from Acts I to II (I think) watching the storm come in, destroy a city, and then barely miss the city of Mahagonny.

So as we watched the Weather Channel, with its little arrows, they looked for all the world like the arrows on the primitive maps in the show.

But Barry was no hurricane. I realized the difference between people used to coastal storms and those not in watching reactions to the storm. Should we evacuate? asked the PP.

All scoffing aside, the wind was pretty intense, not in a destroying buildings kind of way, but in a way that made umbrellas everywhere fear for their skeletal systems, and it did quite a job on one of the Spoleto banners hanging near our hotel. (That thing being whipped around was like gunfinre.) And we just got used to having the hems of our pants and skirts soaked.

At least now I have an awesome new raincoat.