sailors expression
about weather: the weather
is a great bluffer

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Letter to Mr. Nadeau, March 30, 1973. Letters of E. B. White, Revised Edition. Ed. Martha White. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

For the first time this hurricane season, folks in the low country are been alerted to the possibility of water … lots of it.

We are are just miles from the Atlantic Ocean which is a lot of water to begin with.

We have roads that with signs that say, “Road Ends in Water.”

I puzzled over these signs for a bit, wondering why they didn’t say, “ROAD ENDS – 500 FT” until I figured it out that in an area with an 8 foot vertical tide, just WHERE the road ends is a matter of time and tide, but for sure, the road ends at the water.

Then a storm, though whether or not its a hurricane or a tropical storm, the weather people or the storm itself hasn’t made up its mind, is coming.

Storms bring storm surges or push more of the Atlantic Ocean up into the low country which is low as the name implies.

I do not worry a lot about storm surge, as I live in Bluffton, which as the name implies, is up on a bluff over the Maye River, it would take a storm surge of some 25 feet or more to get to me.

A storm surge of 10 feet on top of a high tide, would surely strand me here on the bluff as most of the local roads would be covered.

Then there is the coming rain.

Lots of it.

Then there is the malicious nature of this coming storm.

Though the folks who know don’t know what kind of storm it will when the storm is coming they do agree on two things.

One is that it is FULL of rain from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The other thing is that the storm will get here to the coast between Savannah and Charleston and … stop.

Not that the raining will stop but the storm will stop and for anywhere between the next 10 to 48 hours, rain of Old Testament Bible stories will fall on us from the heavens.

When you drive through the streets of old Charleston, intersections have depth gauges to show how deep the water can get.

Charleston is about 2 feet about sea level.

During high tide, you can hear water roaring through the storm drains just inches below the road beds.

Drop 6 inches of rain at high tide on Charleston and you can figure out why those depth gauges on intersections have a four foot scale.

On its website, the city of Savannah has posted a city map that show which intersections will be flooded.

Savannah is also on a bluff above the Savannah River but it also has a storm water sewage system that is about 100 years old.

Some schools are already closing for the day, Wednesday.

And all of this is speculation.

I have worked with enough weather people to know that nobody knows nothing when it comes to forecasting.

As Mr. White writes, the weather is a great bluffer.

But we all take warning.

And as Mr. White writes, I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet.

I take heart both for the storm and the mess of life that the human race has made on this planet when I consider:

But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.