Tag: rainfall

Toward suppertime recently I checked out the sky and saw areas where it was raining on high but no water was reaching the ground. Somehow I knew that meteorologists would have a special word for this, and I was right. It is called virga, or precipitation that evaporates or turns into gas before it hits the ground. The precipitation can be rain or snow.

I remember first reading about this effect long ago in a book about the dust bowl years in Oklahoma, when farmers standing on their desiccated fields would look to the sky and see the rain they desperately needed almost, but not quite, coming to them. Like a very bad cosmic joke.

Virga happens most often in arid deserts and high-altitude climates where the lower atmosphere is incredibly dry. For virga to form, you need a unique setup: plenty of moisture high up to create clouds, but a deep layer of parched air right above the ground. The rain starts out but hits that warm dry layer of air near the ground, and the dry air drinks up the water before it lands.

It is common in the desert southwest (like Arizona and New Mexico) and high-elevation states like Colorado and Utah. In these areas, storm clouds form very high up, giving the rain a long distance to fall through bone-dry air.  You can easily spot it as it looks like gray streaks or fuzzy curtains hanging down from the clouds. I’ve seen it often since moving to Colorado, but rarely when I lived in the Midwest.

Here are some examples of virga.

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It occurs to me that the thugs of ICE might want to consider other employment oppprtunities … soon. Perhaps even a name change or two. When the Cluck cabal is eventually tossed to the political curb, ICE will be one of the first groups to undergo serious scrutiny and those among them who have committed crimes can look forward to well-deserved prison sentences.

If they think their scabrous behavior will earn them some special protection from the cowards and criminals running the show right now, they are sadly mistaken. The brutes of ICE will find that they are considered completely disposable by their masters, who are a genre of creatures that are unable to think beyond their own needs.

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Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet was first published in 1923. It has never been out of print since then. It is one of the best-selling books of all time. Why? Because it is a very cool book.

I first read it at a vulnerable time of my life. There were many changes happening seemingly at once in the year of 1962. I had just been married that Spring, I was to start my first year of medical school in the Fall, and I was going experiencing one of those short-lived but intense waves of interest in things spiritual that have happened several times in my life. I read not only the Prophet, but two books by Sholem Asch entitled The Apostle and The Nazarene. I know that I opened up the Bhagavad Gita, but I believe that I almost instantly closed it, thinking that it looked like really hard work. I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I actually read some of the Bible, at least the New Testament. The Old Testament was entirely too grim for my delicate sensibilities.

On the seventh day of this grueling search, of course, I rested.

When I first came across it, I thought it may have come from a similar expression in The Prophet, but I was incorrect in that, although there were a couple of quotes that carried a similar message. These are both from the section: On Marriage.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together …

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

So what was the message? I took it as BE NOT GUILTY OF SMOTHERING.

(But look at that poetry. If you couldn’t melt your way into a girl’s heart in 1962 by memorizing and repeating these verses, you really weren’t trying. They should have been sold with a warning label and the purchaser required to take a chastity pledge.)

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I now have two favorite versions of the song “Wicked Game.” The first was by Chris Isaak, and is firmly established (in my mind) as one of the sexiest and most sand-encrusted music videos of all time. The latest addition I found just recently, when I ran across this one by Larkin Poe. They do it wonderfully, without any visible sweat at all. I like the Mona Lisa smile on the face of the slide guitarist.

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Robin and I were in Grand Junction yesterday for an appointment. It was a glaring 102 degrees. Everything outdoors that was in the sun and made of metal was basically untouchable. It was one of those afternoons when I had some time to kill and it was just a two minute walk from the clinic to a coffee shop. One of the good ones. Not totally shiny and plastic. Middle-aged scholars thinking great thoughts, freshman college girls livening the air with a constant patter consisting of half OMGs and half giggles. A couple of tall young men looking like they’d just come from a GQ shoot.

What was missing was the scruffy element. Missing, that is, until I showed up. It is a banner that I carry proudly wherever I go. I can truthfully say that I know of no instance in my entire life when someone said to me: “Would you teach me how to dress and move about? I just love your bedraggled gestalt.” Especially since the years have piled up and I have become invisible. You know that about geezer men, don’t you? No one sees them.

I read a very funny piece a couple of weeks back, where another senior man was describing what happens when an old guy goes to the gym. He is surrounded by the young and fit, and often astonished at how blatantly sexual the dress of some of the young women was. They were there both for aerobics and to try out their attraction skills. But when they noticed they’d attracted the gaze of geezers it became a case of: Eeewwwwww! Stop looking at me! I am so out of your league it should be illegal for you to even be here.

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Header photo: taken from a public recreation area near Presho SD. My son Jonnie, a friend of his, and I were camping alongside a small reservoir that was stocked with bass and panfish. We caught a few, and here the boys had been assigned the job of cleaning them for supper.

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