Back to the Beginning...

I know, I know... I said I would be here more to write about things that mattered to me, to go a bit deeper and share a bit more, but then I think I thought too much about it. All of the sudden though, yesterday, at a women's event with the church, someone asked me a question that got my brain writing a post. It's been so long since that automatically happened that it caught me a bit off-guard.

She asked, "What got you so interested in weather?"

Pretty simple and benign question, but it stirred within me, reminiscing about the path that has brought me here, to this point, right now. In my early days, as a child, weather was always been something fascinating to me. As my brother hid under the bed, hiding from the "lightling", my silly self was planted on the front porch watching the beams of light penetrate the sky with a booming crash, my mother trying urgently to drag me out of harm's way. The wind has always felt like a caress to my face.

My mother tells a story of her walking home once in a storm with me. It came out of nowhere, and the wind was strong, so strong that it lifted me off my feet and she anchored me, much like a kite. I was only 2 years old, but that thrill ride must have been etched on my heart. I think it was probably that moment that the weather became a part of me.

Years later, Hurricane Gayle (1985) passed through my area, just west of us actually, but we lived on the coast so we expected some storm surge (people along the shore had actually been evacuated), but the winds were only high end tropical storm force where we were. I know now that it could have been worse... Our neighborhood had a bit of a hurricane party at one of the houses, and the kids were allowed to play outside in the street which ran perpendicular to the ocean (parenting at its best), literally about 5 tightly packed houses down from the raging sea. There I was, all of 10 years old, leaning into this pounding wind, letting it hold me, push me, surround me, rage against me. I was in love. The wind and I, we got close. That is such a rare joyful memory from my childhood.

Fast forward, just 4 years, to October 1, 1989, and there I was with a boy (ick), parked by a field watching the turmoiled sky, as it dimpled and fretted and lightning cracked and wind started to blast us. At the time I didn't realize that it was a powerfully rotating wall cloud (oops), about to drop an F-2 (that was prior to the development of the enhanced Fujita scale) right in front of us. He tired of sky watching (how is that even possible???), and we went to the video store on the opposite side of the field, where we were all quickly scurried into the center room, as said tornado breezed by the parking lot of the video store where we were hunkered down in the "adult movie room". The tornado itself just grazed the parking lot, throwing shopping carts around, as if they were rag-dolls.

Yep, I'd been bit by the weather bug, a weather bug that that flowed through my veins like some crazy drug, a happy endorphin generator that really I knew very little about back then (obviously...). It wasn't until 2006 that I started to learn about what it was I loved so much. It was then, that my passion fueled a knowledge seeking mission within me. At that time, I sought out to learn everything there was to learn about weather and then some. I made it my personal mission to learn and grow and seek and chase this mysterious, unpredictable, untameable thing that was weather. I couldn't help but do it. Along the way, I found so much more than I ever could have expected.

Until next time...
 ~Dewdrop