With their weather radar and all, our favorite TV station’s meteorologists generally are spot-on predicting the weather, out here in northern California. Except yesterday, Tuesday March 21, when what they refer to as a Level 3 weather event, meaning heavy periods of rain and blustery wind, almost at the last minute, turned totally unpredictable.
The Level 3 storm was supposed to ease, in the afternoon… so needing to be out a bit, donning our rain slickers and rainy-day footwear, my wife and I figured we could brave the waning, stormy weather.
Maybe, in the news, you’ve been hearing about our local bomb cyclone? The blustery, rainy atmospheric river heading our way, from out in the Pacific Ocean, wobbled suddenly, and if I’ve got this right, caused low pressure and high pressure to encounter each other much differently than anticipated, so that blustery, rainy weather became suddenly cyclonic. An atmospheric pressure record, having something to do with millibars, was broken, and the storm was even being described as ‘catastrophic’.
We’d never felt the force of nature, quite like that bomb cyclone. We’ve felt the force of earthquakes, shaking us up, but only for seconds, sometimes seeming more like minutes. But the bomb cyclone just kept going, whipping big trees all around, and dumping torrential rain.
On one of the main streets we go down, near our neighborhood, a tree the cyclone blew over blocked all but a small section of the street, and under the tree, we could see what appeared to be the remains of a tall street light.
More foliage was strewn over streets closer to home.
The next day, reading Dan McEvoy’s article in the Daily Post, about wetter than usual weather potentially easing the western states’ drought, I realized why he had “potentially” and other words like “could” and “might” in the article. Because even with the bomb cyclone we experienced up close and first-hand, and hearing about 50 or 60 feet of snow piling up on our high Sierra mountains, and more than 30 inches of rain, so far, in and around San Francisco, the drought potentially could ease.
But, then again, if precipitation is only a trickle, in the years ahead, we’ll have to see.
Uncertainty about weather and drought conditions isn’t the only uncertainty. There’s uncertainty about the economy, too. And after calming down from the bomb cyclone, I discovered the possibly unique way a business firm described a pending staff reduction: “Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”
And with uncertainty surrounding the nation’s banking industry, right now, the legendary investor, Warren Buffet, put things in perspective, with something he’d noted about banking, years ago, in 1996:
“It’s a business that can be a very good business, when run right. There’s no magic to it. You just have to stay away from doing something foolish. It’s a little like investing. You don’t have to do anything very smart. You just have to avoid doing things that are ungodly dumb.”
Hearing about uncertainty with the economy, and banking, and all, might take our mind off unpredictable weather and droughts.
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.