Writer's Block: And the forecast is…

[gridlore]

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I miss the apocalyptic thunderstorms we used to get at Fort Benning. Growing up in a place that barely had seasons, let along weather, left me totally naive about what a storm really was.

Picture the scene. A hot August day. Well over 100°F/37.7°C. 80%+ humidity. You're out in full early-eighties infantry kit: steel pot, BDUs, LBE, M-16A1 and ammo for the M-60. The air is so thick and still you swear that if you stay in the same place you can use up all the oxygen around you. The air is a solid thing. Humidity and sweat have plastered your clothing to you and you can see that the camo face paint is running off your platoon mates' faces.

Then the word comes: storm moving in. The order is given to take off and stack all metal equipment. Everyone lies down in the open, well away from the treeline. Then a line of ink-black clouds appears, boiling across the Chattahoochee River valley. The temperature drops 15 degrees in 15 seconds, and the air suddenly become crystal clear. The world goes dark as the clouds blot out the sun, and the temperature falls even farther, leaving you shivering. Then the rain comes down in sheets, drenching you and turning the ground to red muck. Above you lightning arcs from cloud to cloud, or streaks towards the ground. Deeper in the storm, lightning merely lights the clouds, giving you momentary glimpses of what most surely has to be a war between the storm gods. Thunder rolls and crashes until you can't tell when one peal ends and another begins. This goes on for twenty minutes or so, then the storm front passes and light returns.

Yeah, I really miss that.

What I don't miss is snow. I despise the White Slushy Menace in all its forms.

Comments

[capplor.livejournal.com]

We had one of them just last week. It's fun to throw real tall rocky mountains into the mix.

[kengr]

Slush is bad. But in places with *real* winter you only get it at the end of winter. The rest of winter, it's too cold for slush.

Thank Ghu Spokane wasn't the sort of place where the slush transitioned into muck. The Farm I spent most of a year on *was*. And one of the other foster kids got in trouble for driving a tractor into a spot where it almost sank too far to recover in the mud that spring.

[mikkop.livejournal.com]

Yeah, slush is bad, but real snow is great. It's cold, though, which puts off some people.

Here in Finland we usually have a proper winter, like last two years, and it's been nice. There's also a slush period in the autumn but thankfully it's usually short. It can be quite depressing as it's usually also the darkest time of the year - in November and December it's dark and when there's no snow it's still darker. The snow helps a lot during January and February though the amount of daylight is the same in principle.

Three years ago we didn't get much snow so it was like a rainy autumn for almost six months. Even though I do like autumn, that felt almost like too much and I've been happy with the snow we've been getting since.

Obviously we get the upside of long, dark winter nights in the summer when the Sun never really sets, even in the Southern Finland. I think I'm on the same latitudes as middle Alaska, for reference.

But slush. Brr. Even worse if there's some ice underneath. It's... slippery.

[freyjaw.livejournal.com]

I know those storms well. One of my favorite colors is the color of impending storm clouds: that bruised blackish-blue that is so hard to truly duplicate, much less describe.

I used to like snow. I just can't tolerate extremes anymore. I miss building such grand snow forts...

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Wow. That sounds hella impressive.

Down here on the valley floor, we rarely get snow. I like to go up into the mountains and visit snow, much like I visit other people's kids and/or pets.

[dalen-talas.livejournal.com]

Thunderstorms are awesome. (Un)fortunately, I never saw any of such epic proportions as you describe.

[claidheamhmor]

Sounds pretty awesome!

I'm glad I never had extreme temps lie that in the military, but on the downside, we had to carry around an assault rifle much heavier and clumsier than the M-16.