Well, Nancy and I are now officially enrolled in cocorahs (kō-, kō-, räz); an acronym which sounds like something concocted at the Defense Department but is actually a program affiliated with the Weather Service where volunteers note their daily observations of precipitation.  The official name of this voluntary group of precipitation posters is The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network.  We’ve ordered our way cool precipitation gauge ($27.25 from [email protected]) which we will be setting up at the Farm after we complete our online training.  Note:  If you are interested in weather and you decide to visit the Weather Your Way website you might want to leave your credit card some distance from your computer—they definitely have some items you might need or at least find interesting.  We also ordered a minimum reading thermometer, so in the future we won’t have to guess how cold it got overnight when, for instance, most of the hydrangeas froze.  I was thinking it would be fun to have an anemometer to measure the wind velocity.  We wouldn’t have to just complain generally about the recent high winds.  We could be specific.  “Yea, we’re sure sorry about that lovely tree you had on order.  A 56 mile-per-hour gust kind of ripped it out of the pot…”  But I guess we can wait on the anemometer.

With our proximity to the Fox River and our livelihood of growing and selling products that are quite sensitive to how much water they receive, our participation in cocorahs seems simple enough.  We first learned of the network at the annual U of I Extension LaSalle County Spring Garden Seminar in March where Bill Morris of the National Weather Service’s Romeoville office offered a presentation and hosted a Weather Service information booth.  Bill is one of those people who is pretty easy to like and listen to, with exhaustive knowledge, great anecdotes, and the ability and desire to easily connect with all kinds of folks.  Bill’s specialty is hydrology wherein he monitors and predicts river water levels based on precipitation and other factors.  Between Bill’s stories and the really great precipitation gauge on display, I was hooked and knew we would have to become part of the network (www.cocorahs.org).

Perhaps the funniest thing I learned from Bill involves NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) weather radio, which is a broadcast via a special radio frequency provided by the Weather Service.  We have an old set of walk-talkies at the Farm which have the ability to receive NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts.  When really sinister looking storm clouds approach, someone often unearths one of those radios.  I kind of like NOAA weather radio.  To me the flat monotone voice is that of an older male with a kind of Norwegian accent.  Often the man has warned of storms or lines of storms so accurately that we could see them approach and experience their fury as he continued to warn of their potency and path of travel.  So I asked Bill about this guy at NOAA weather radio.  I told him I wanted to meet the guy.  Bill was pretty prepared for this, apparently the Norwegian weather announcer has had a lot of fans through the years and has attracted a lot of interest (and generally everybody agrees that he is Norwegian).  But it turns out that the announcer is a machine.  And no one exactly knows why he has the Norwegian accent.  Bill invited me to visit the National Weather Service office in Romeoville sometime.  I probably won’t be going.  I had a bond with this guy, call him Lars.  We shared some amazing storms, “a powerful cell passing Sheridan moving east at 30 miles per hour.”  It’s like finding out there is no Santa, but I’ll still be thinking of Lars those mornings after the big storms when I am checking the new rain gauge and emailing the results. 

As I was doing some cleanup at my Dad’s vintage ranch style house the other day, the lighting was just right to reveal a series of faint dimples in the painted rake boards of the south facing peaked roof.  I remembered back over fifty years to the summer afternoon when those then not so faint dimples were formed.  My mom, sister and I had been across the street at the neighbor’s swimming pool beating the heat when the sky began to cloud.  Within 30 minutes the three of us were cowering in a darkened hallway too afraid to seek the greater safety of our basement because the route required passing by two large sliding glass doors that were reverberating with an unceasing fusillade of wind-driven hail.

I like weather memories and so must a lot of other people based on all the questions relating weather to various events that are printed in Meteorologist Tom Skilling’s weather section in the Chicago Tribune.  The memory of a sweet afternoon interrupted by a powerful storm and the haven of a hallway surrounded by a Mother’s love is a powerful gift emanating from some not so obvious marks on a brown board.  Perhaps even more powerful than individual interactions with memorable weather are the shared interactions of many people touched by an unforgettable weather event.  On a house walk in Elgin I learned about the Palm Sunday tornado that struck that city in 1920.  One particular Queen Anne style house was damaged by the tornado and ended up being rebuilt with lots of Craftsman style updates.  I imagine that family’s story would be rather interesting.  And of course that tornado is a part of that community’s fabric and even now there are subtle signs like the Craftsman-Victorian house that give witness to that major weather event.

While there are plenty of unforgettable weather tragedies; storms, floods, droughts, not all memorable weather is a disaster.  I am thinking of an ice storm in 1964 or 65 (I’ll have to write to Tom Skilling) that was severe enough to thoroughly coat every surface well enough to skate on but not significantly enough to break a lot of tree limbs or cause massive electricity blackouts.  And I am recalling one of the most joyous weather events of my life—the Great Chicago Blizzard of 1967, which I remember without the responsibilities of being an adult.  The March Spring of 2012 will go down as an unforgettable weather event.  The sustained beautiful warm weather would be an amazing occurrence in May or maybe even June.  To experience such a brace of so nearly perfect unbelievably warm days in March has never happened in any living person’s lifetime.  One would be lucky to experience weather this nice for this long even in many warm weather destinations.  Some will be trying to find implications in this weather.  Others are worrying what happens when the inevitable frost hits.  In some ways this weather could be as scary as a powerful storm or a flood.  On the other hand this spring has been and continues to be perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.  And I am celebrating that (at least for right now).

As a harbinger of spring I'm not sure that the return of turkey vultures to the vicinity of Redbud Creek Farm ranks right up there with sighting one's first robin or the return of the swallows to Capistrano in the minds of most people, but I think it's kind of special.  Here at the Farm the vultures usually arrive in early March when the lengthening days and intensifying sun hint of an impending spring, though most other changes are still quite subtle and the landscape is at its bleakest.  For me concentrating on some task at or near ground level, my first glimpse of the creatures is often the result of silent movement in my midst, a shadow racing across the land at the periphery of my vision or sometimes right across my work area.  Instinctively I follow the movement.  Before I actually see the moving shadow's source, I'm pretty sure that it will be a turkey vulture or two and as I see the large bird or birds wheeling on a sun heated air current, I experience a bit of joy.

Growing up in DuPage County as the land was changed from agricultural to suburban in the 1960s, I don't remember ever seeing a single turkey vulture.  Turkey vultures really entered my consciousness on the cusp of adulthood.  A few days after graduating from college I left home to go backpacking in New Mexico.  On one of those legendarily lovely mid-May days, driving the width of the state of Missouri on the interstate successor to Route 66, I was repeatedly amazed with almost continual sightings of groups of turkey vultures wheeling, soaring, and gliding above the intensely verdant, fresh, rolling land beneath a cloud-flecked blue sky.  The following day I entered New Mexico and learned that the next ten days or so would be spent driving and mostly hiking in the "land of enchantment," and I put a new word in my working vocabulary--enchantment.

Enchantment implies some element of change, a bewitching, a transformation, a new reality.  When you experience enchantment you are charmed or thrilled or somehow compelled to experience the ordinary in a slightly different way.  That day across Missouri was special, filled with elements of achievement, hope, celebration and simple joy in the moment.  Those elements in some way left a bit of blank canvas in my mind on which those big birds, so ungainly up close but so majestic in flight, ended up being permanently painted.  Whenever I see turkey vultures in flight, but especially as they return in early spring, my mind somehow dredges up that old canvas and yet again the wonder of that day adds to the joy of the moment watching music in the sky.  Ah--enchantment.