West by South-West
So at the community center (where the south branch of the cafe is) there is a TV hanging from the ceilingright across from the cash register, where I can see it, and it is tuned to the weather station all day every day (with the volume turned down, so you can hear the radio station they play over the speaker system). (The day the tornado came through, I watched it get awfully close to Rockford on the radar, which freaked me out abit because that is where my Grandma lives. It passed right by though so I knew she was fine eventually.) I like watching it, though. The crazy volume-free infomercials they occassionally have are pretty hysterical and the weather shows are pretty interesting at times. Today they showed forest fires in California (I hope Lisa, Charlie, and all my Alpha Delta Chi girls are safe!), tropical storms in Honduras and Cuba, and and a water spout off the coast of Florida.
I think water spouts are pretty cool. I first read about one in a pirate story I read as a little girl called Peter Duck (I read a lot of those because when I was a kid, I wanted to be a pirate…either that or an astronaut). They are basically a tornado, but out over the ocean; they pick up water, and also any debris or boats in their path…and sometimes even fish! Can you imagine what it would look like when it eventually settled down again? It would absolutely rain fish! LOL.
But my favorite thing about the weather channel is that in their reports, they always tell you about the wind. They’ll say what the temperature is, and what the humidity is, and that rain is likely at a certain part of the day, and that the chance of precipitation is such-and-such a percent, and then at the very end they will say something like “wind 5 to 10 mph WSW,” meaning “West by South-West.” I have no idea what it means, but I love to read it…it seems so nautical. And I like to think of the wind going where-ever it wants to go, however fast it wants to go, and changing unpredictably. The wind has so much strength and freedom. Seeing that WSW is like seeing an old weathervane on top of a barn…it reminds you how utterly at the mercy of the weather we are, and how big it all is. Big things, like the enourmous clouds of a thunderstorm and the mountains and the ocean, always make me think of God. 
I like that.
