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16 October 2005
Hail merry
Over the weekend, Pasadena has been treated to a bouquet of weather patterns and surely enough it sent all the local television networks into a tizzy with solicitous newscasters handing over to weathermen and weatherwomen their moments of self-assumed significance.First the aridblazinghot Friday afternoon, then the cooldampmoist evening and then a draughtyfrigid night that slipped in through the window and played truant with exposed throats. Saturday started off as just another nondescript weekend morning but progressively shrank down the temperature scale. All Sunday morningnoonafternoon in Altadena right at the shoulder of the San Gabriel foothills at the Town & Country Club at the Caltech Y Board retreat was transparent yet feelingless behind large French screens and huddling conference rooms. Sunday evening -- given enough warning from Saturday's pranks -- was closed off with a pair of socks, fastened screens and draped blankets but the night was felt through hail and shower falling lightly, intermittently, inexorably. Cooling units clanked with watery spikes and frosty missiles that assailed their diamondy grids. All those sounds eddied around and drained into a sinking bed of subconsciousness but they left behind in their absence soggy shoes and shrivelled, unwanted leaves that are always ruthlessly offered first as appeasement to the skies. By Monday, the squalls and the thunderstorms and the cloudbursts that we had heard and read so much about in Bombay and New Orleans were upon us in Pasadena.
Ten minutes during the afternoon hour past lunch was apocalyptic in the wondrous play of light. One moment there was wide daylight with all in full relief and the next, white and red streetlights of caution came on following the sudden shroud of darkness. A hushed silence in due anticipation of pelting showers; and on cue came nicely rounded capsules of ice that fell on concrete like lead pennies. Even they were quickly hustled off and the heavens were sprayed over again with white paint.
