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Showing posts from May, 2013

Shock, awe, sadness, and shelters

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I'll be the first to admit that I'm a weather geek. In many ways, I think I missed my calling. I watch the Weather Channel the way a lot of people watch sports: I love the science, and I want to know what's going on. My dream vacation would be two weeks of storm-chasing: riding around in a van with other crazy people who love weather. This is never going to happen, says my husband. We'll see. I have a problem with authority.   I have been fascinated with weather since I was a small child, and in fact, many of my childhood memories involve weather events. The ice storm of 1958 features in one of my earliest memories, that of my mother hanging a blanket between the living room and the dining room to conserve heat. I also recall the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962, a brutal March storm that destroyed the coastal summer home of one of my childhood friends, as well as much of the beach towns I knew as a child. In my mid-teens, a dramatic microburst struck my Delaware neighbo