A Litany of Storms

It’s surprising how different any other place can be from home, regardless how close it may appear on a map. London was no different in that it too was different. London suffered from greater storms than home, or at least it had while I was there. So did Haileybury, for that matter, but Hailebury’s weather was more similar than it was different. Sudbury was much the same as Timmins, so much so I might as well have been home. But the South was noticeably more humid; so it came as no surprise that its autumn storms were more severe. So too its transition.

I recall when back in Sudbury, in Res, a floor-mate from Barrie was bragging about how great Barrie was. It was the perfect city, it was the perfect size, it had the perfect weather. We were crowded into the common room as he declared these simple, indisputable facts. The six-o’clock news was on. He was interrupted by a special report. Barrie had been hit by a tornado, cutting a swath of destruction through the city, dispelling his declaration of perfect weather. He was shocked. He was concerned. We too were shocked. A tornado! In Ontario! We were also amused. And we laughed. The Fates could never have pulled off a coincidence like that again in a million years. Yeah, we were assholes to have laughed, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

Autumn’s first snows arrived as expected in London, in late October. The day it came, it was still rather mild to my reckoning. There was a sporadically brisk breeze when I walked up to the campus, but that’s not to say that it was cold, either. I wore a light sweater and a jean jacket. No other outerwear was required. The wind picked up, slaked off, picked up again, gusting in from the north. The air smelled of snow. If you come from the North, you understand what I mean. Snow has a smell like no other. The sky filled with patchy, yet visibly fat, cloud cover. Whatever other weather held off for the rest of the morning.

My classes complete, I headed home for lunch. Early on, the first flakes fell, then thickened. At first it was rather pleasant. Fat fluffy snow drifted on a light breeze, melting as it lit on the ground. Then the wind picked up. The cloud cover closed ranks, cutting off what warmth the sun had afforded me up till then. The temperature dropped with it. The snow thickened. And turned sticky. As I was passing the University Hospital Parking Garage I was treated with the full force of the wind, and on gaining Perth Drive it began to rain. Thick heavy rain. This is not to say that it ceased snowing; it hadn’t. Snow and rain were falling together, flying in my face on an increasingly icy wind.

I’d never experienced this. Within a block I was soaked through, yet wearing an increasingly thick coat of snow to the fore. Everything I could see was painted by a wet white sticky glue that slid and drooped and defied the gravity that pulled it to the ground. Five minutes later, I gained my front stoop. I had to shake my jacket hard to detach this new skin, and skim my thighs as though scraping slush from a windshield. I stripped and spent a quarter hour in the shower to throw off the damp chill that had enveloped me in about a third of the time. When I was towelling off, I noticed that the snow had been replaced by a driving rain that had erased all evidence of the snow that had until minutes before clung to all I could see. No one in the house was particularly interested in my little adventure. They’d all seen it before.

Winter was milder, if snowier. Storms blew in, the roads impassable for hours at a time. And passed as quickly as they came. And melted away to almost nothing in a couple days. I learned a new weather term: the snow squall. Snowbanks were not the hard-pressed windrows I remembered, but temporary things that could never support my weight. I fell through one such stepping off the bus, landing flat on my face.

Spring was no less gentle. I’d been up at the library studying. It was easier studying there than arguing with Jamie night after night about volume. When I left the campus, it was a gorgeous summer evening in the spring. Hot, humid, heavy. The air felt close. Thunder rolled in the distance. I looked up and saw stars, so I didn’t think anything of it. Without a cloud in the sky, I thought I had plenty of time to get home before the storm arrived, if it ever did. I miscalculated. Before I left the hilltop campus behind, the clouds crowded in, the wind picked up, and the flash of lightning was lighting my steps more often than the overhead streetlamps. I got as far as the University Hospital Parking Garage when I began to get nervous. The flashes and the thunder had become a litany of exclamation. I was counting off the seconds between flash and boom, but I was no longer sure where one left off and the next began. Not a drop had fallen.

Then there was a flash that all but blinded me. The roar was deafening. The thunder hammered me down, buckling my knees. I’d flinched so hard that I’d actually come close to jerking flat on the ground. There was another bolt, and another, and another. And I was up and running for the open wall of the seven-story structure. Luckily the 1^st floor WAS open, so I leapt over the half wall and carried on until I was midway between the rows of parked cars.

I stood there for a few minutes, still shaking, trying and failing to light a cigarette. The gusts kept ripping the flame from the Bic’s spout. The storm passed, as quickly as it came, as quickly as that awe-inspiring storm I’d watched roll over Haileybury two years before. Only that time I was safe within the confines of the 2^nd floor cafeteria.

Not out in the open. Not at ground zero.

I waited there until I’d finished my smoke before poking my head out. It still hadn’t rained.

I could still taste the Ozone.