Tornadic activity, March madness, global warming

Published 4/4/06

Everybody talks about the weather, and I’m quoting here, but nobody does anything about it.

Don’t look at me. I talk—on paper—for a living.

And today I’m a-talkin’ about March weather madness, the baiting of new business to central Indiana, the Global Wacko Weather Liberation Front and little Yorkies twisting in the wind.

Trust me. I’ll pull this together. But first a trip down barometric pressure lane…

In the good ol’ days, when I was a lad, spring was spring, summer was summer, fall was fall and winter was a snowy sled ride down a big icy hill and into the ankles of unsuspecting friends. Then after a normal winter of a ton of snow, you’d have a nice spring season transition with some gentle breezes for lifting kites aloft and some last shoots at the hoop before swinging into baseball season.

Oh sure, into each life—and each planted petunia—a little rain would fall but back then the meteorologists knew how to be fair and reasonable even if their forecast wasn’t fair and mild. And as true Hoosiers we all have fond memories of tornadoes ripping through our towns and relocating our county courthouse in the adjacent county. But in the good ol’ days you always knew that, whatever the existing atmospheric aberration, the weather pattern would snap back into place and conditions would return to normal. Even though the weather page might predict a full week of fog, drizzle and chill, you could tolerate it because a front was moving through Thursday night and Friday would be…“pleasant.” It was a forecast you could depend on.

Nowadays, it seems that by the time Friday arrives, there’s a change in the wind…and the rain…and the soccer ball sized hail. This is not normal.

Case in point: Last week, for example, if I understood the forecast correctly, the prognosticators were calling for a weekend warm up with days that would be partly cloudy—and by implication, one would suspect, partly sunny. Of course, as we all know now, it was partly tornado-y. I suspect this forecast of disinformation is really an international conspiracy to keep those of us who are climate sensitive from committing anarchy when the weather calls for five straight days of both tropical and clinical depressions.

Here’s what worries me: last weekend Indianapolis played host to thousands of NCAA fans from around the country. Oh sure, some of them were seized by March madness, looking to party in the name of collegiate basketball, but others may well have been suits and veeps looking to relocate their businesses in Indy or any of its bedroom communities. Wink! Wink!

So, what happens? Our business prospects are greeted by a hail-filled gully washer, downed power lines, office towers with blown out windows, twisted traffic signals, streets full of debris and toppled trees as 82 mph twisters danced around the Circle. UCLA and Florida fans had to be thinking, “This is not normal.”

And I was thinking, “This cannot help the ailing the Hoosier economy.”

The Indianapolis Star quoted a man who was watching out the window of a restaurant when the first of the major squalls hit. “Two ladies got stuck outside and were pinned up against the building,” he said. “I ran out and grabbed them.”

Yeah right, buddy, go back to Baton Rouge. This is not normal.

Here at home, I put the Yorkie out on the back porch Sunday evening so he could hike a leg. A few minutes later, the lightning and thunder rolled through and he was squawking like a chicken.

This is not normal. They say animals will be the first to relay the signs of global warming.