Weather Memory: January 8th, 2016

On my way to the 2016 American Meteorological Society National Meeting in New Orleans, I boarded my connecting flight in Dallas. Everybody in Dallas was forgiving of my Packers jersey. “I know, Dez caught the ball,” I told one Cowboys fan, a reference to the errant officiating in a recent Dallas/Green Bay playoff football game. I was only in the city for a moment, though. I headed to New Orleans. Immediately the pilots had some bad news for us.

“We will not be doing a drink service because, as some of you on the right hand of the plane can see, we’re approaching some weather.” There was a convective system directly in the path of this flight. Fantastic, I sneered sarcastically. I liked watching storms, but I did not like flying through them. There was no way around it either to the north or the south. Hopefully, we could fly over it. We were in the clouds very quickly upon taking off. 

I turned my iPhone music to David Bowie, unaware that Bowie’s time on this planet would shortly end. I thought about the music as I watched the skies outside. “I didn’t know what time it was and the lights were low; I leaned back on my radio… some cat was layin’ down some rock ‘n roll, lotta soul, he said.”  Pretty soon… I saw outside of the window that we were approaching the weather. Lightning was getting closer with every second of the trip. This flight was not going to be boring.

Lightning at night is one thing. The sky is electric and alive and the contrast between pure dark and the brightest lights we have in the universe is a marvel to behold. Lightning in the night while in flight is quite another. I have lived my entire life by the code that lightning is above me.

Here, more than 30,000 feet in the air, that tenant was no longer true. The light flashed from below. The light flashed on the horizon. Bright blue bolts stretched across the sky all around us, consuming our existence with the atmospheric reaction between positively and negatively charged ions. At that moment, there was no world beyond our little box and the bright, flashing cloud outside of us. We were 30,000 feet above the earth and the associated tornado warnings with these storms, with more than half of the atmosphere below us and a seemingly eternal amount of universal space above us. Bowie continued. “There’s a starman waiting in the sky; he’d like to come and meet us but the thinks he’d blow our minds.”  

The ride was bumpy. Each time we hit a particular updraft, we jolted, first up and then down. I grabbed my arm rest a little more tightly each time. We were above the actual thunderstorm, but the air is still bumpy due to the volatile air below us. I wonder what is going to happen to the plane. There was nothing I could do up here but stare out the window with the same song on repeat in my headphones.

I was thinking about my dad again. I thought about how I would always run and tell him when I saw lightning for the first time each calendar year. Strangely enough, we had some rumbles of thunder during the snow bands a few days prior, so this was not my first lightning of 2016. But this was the first spectacular lightning of the year. A few tears rolled down my cheek again. Three years after his passing, I was not out of tears yet, apparently. Dad… it’s me, I whispered, quoting Bowie and knowing he probably did not approve of the tears. “I had to phone someone, so I picked on you.”  The things I miss. Come on, Mr. airplane pilot. If you do your job, we might land safely tonight. 

Not yet, dad. I cannot join you yet.

Lightning diminished as we got east of the complex; a few flashes dot the western horizon as we pushed south down towards New Orleans. The plane safely descended; Bowie keeps coming through the headphones. Things are tough, but the plane got through the weather, so I am going to take this week on headfirst as the plane comes safely down. “He’s told us not to blow it cause he knows it’s all worthwhile.”  What does worthwhile look like, I wondered aloud, unconcerned if neighboring passengers heard my musing. Maybe my dad could see that I would get things together someday. Right then, I just… could not see it.

What could I see?

Right there. That moment. I was in New Orleans, a magical city of music and food and for one week, meteorologists. A lot had changed since I was last there, in January of 2012. I could not control what had happened in the last four years and I could not control what would happen when I got back to Omaha. All I could control was the here and the now. 

AMS 2016, let’s do this thing.