Tempestarius*
Once, in New York City, a stranger said, “You have the ocean in you.” I took it as a compliment, despite the fact that I was born in Rockland, Maine where the ocean is viewed more practically than romantically – by the locals, anyway. Advice that I heard growing up included, “Never turn your back on the ocean” and, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”
*
The Gulf of Maine is warming at nearly triple the rate of the world’s oceans, 0.84 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. There was a marked increase in 2010. In 2024, the Gulf of Maine experienced its twelfth warmest year on record.
*
I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. I was homeschooling my two children in Marina del Rey, sea light blasting through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was afternoon, after lunch (the usual Annie’s mac n cheese and me reading aloud from Harry Potter), during the science lesson. The condo had an open layout, and my husband was having a meeting in a corner of the living room with a sales guy named Shawn. The view beckoned like it always did: a forest of masts in a jigsaw of boat slips, the vast blue horizon of the Pacific beyond.
We used the K12 online curriculum, per the California Virtual Academy, and I strictly followed the plan for each lesson. On this day, sunny and clear and probably 74 degrees as usual, the topic was thunder and lightning – specifically, why you see the lightning before you hear the thunder. They actually occur at the same time. However…
I strolled around as I sometimes did while the kids listened at the dining room table. Just as I reached the windows, and the part about the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second –
A single huge, thick, white, jagged bolt of lightning in that very instant sizzled down from the top of the sky straight into the ocean.
Everyone was transfixed, eyes wide and mouths agape. Not one to waste an insanely teachable moment, I cupped my hand to my ear and simply said, “Wait for it.”
Then came a great, crashing ripple of thunder. Right on cue.
“…And the speed of sound is about 1,125 feet per second!” I finished. “Each second between the lightning and the thunder is a mile, so you can tell how far away the storm is!”
That was it. You could heard a pin drop. No clouds, no sign of a storm. The sun was still shining.
After a few minutes of stunned silence, Shawn said, “Jeez, what are you, a witch?”
*
Years later, I discovered that I am in fact related to two Salem witches: Rebecca Nourse on my maternal side, and Susannah North Martin on my paternal side. I don’t think this is uncommon for someone whose Ancestry.com map is two big blobs: one in England and the other in New England. Also, I’m convinced the witch trials had more to do with real estate than witchcraft.
Lately, I have learned that storm-raising, or weather witchcraft, is a thing. It has caused thousands of people to be prosecuted and executed for such alleged crimes as ruining crops and destroying communities. Scotland, Germany, and Bavaria held notable trials in the late 1500s.
*
It happened again. Just a few weeks ago.
The kids are grown and gone. My husband and I live in Las Vegas, in a high-ceilinged house with sago and coconut palms, a Texas live oak, Texas sage, and lantana dotting the yard. I get stupidly excited when it rains, or even when the sky appears torn with virga – precipitation that evaporates before it hits the ground.
We were lounging in our plunge pool, the air 105 degrees, the sun bleaching everything. I’d heard a weather forecast talking about monsoons – here, in the Mojave – which seemed crazy to me. I’d always lived on a coast. I associated monsoons with tigers, jungles, coffee beans, “Burma” after the Jack Gilbert poem.
“Is it monsoon season now?” I asked my husband. His tan looked dark. His silver hair glowed.
“Monsoon?” he laughed, gesturing at the perfectly still, dry air. “What monsoon?”
Just then a cyclone of winds whipped up. Leaves and dust swirled. Tiny pink blossoms dropped around me in the pool. We couldn’t hear each other talk. The sky turned dark. The wind blew harder. We could hear the crashes of objects falling over in the neighbors’ yards. The desert willow branches overhead switched back and forth like snakes, flinging leaves and seed pods. We covered our heads, expecting clay tiles to fly off houses at any second. All we could breathe was dust, with that feeling of hard wind flat against your nostrils.
As suddenly as it began, all went quiet. The yard was a mess. The pool was a mess. I cupped my hands, dragging them up through the pool water to emerge with a soggy bouquet of pink buds.
A final wisp of breathy warm wind curled around my neck, stroking my face and lifting my hair before it, too, disappeared.
“Witchy woo,” my husband said.
*
The upcoming El Nino season is set to be a record-breaker. According to NASA, “We know these large-scale shifts in Pacific winds and waters initiate El Nino. What we don’t know is what triggers the shift. This remains a scientific mystery.”
*
How do I feel about these “taps on the shoulder” from Mother Nature, or beyond? I’m not a witch. I’m not a wiccan. I’m no 21st century tempestarius, although I love the word. I’ve never made it rain, or stopped a storm. I’ve never tried to. I don’t believe I could.
I feel let in on a secret. I feel like I have been in contact with great power. I always sought intensity, and that’s another saying I grew up with: “Careful what you wish for.”
Perhaps it’s all a nod from God. Perhaps I have a brain problem. Perhaps it’s just communication, perhaps our planet – saying, “Pay attention,” “Behold,” or even, “Help.”
*
Whatever this weather thing is, it might be generational.
My daughter was a toddler on a flight with her little brother and me from Portland, Maine to Kansas City. Both kids were polite, experienced flyers. But I was taken aback by the way she was looking out the jet window – out and up, at the giant marshmallow clouds gleaming with sunlight. She had a beatific smile on her face. And she was waving.
“What are you waving at?” I asked.
She gave me a brief happy glance before resuming her attentive greetings toward the upper atmosphere.
“The dead people,” she said.
#
*Tempestarius – a medieval weather-making magician.
References:
https://www.gmri.org
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/el-nino/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2015/11/30/how-climate-change-triggered-literal-witch-hunts-through-the-ages/
