I. KTPA 020753Z 02008KT 10SM BKN250 12/06 A3023 RMK AO2 SLP235 T01220056 $

Humor me. Draft a new text message and send it to 358782 (standard message and data rates may apply) The body should be the letter m, followed by a space, followed by your local airport code. Mine would read “M TPA”. You should receive a baffling string of information similar to the one above. You can translate this yourself using this list, or add “PT” to the message, now “M TPA PT”, and you will obtain the PlainText of a METAR, a Meteorological Aerodrome Report. “T TPA” and you’ll get the Terminal Area Forecast.

If you are a pilot or aeronautical enthusiast you may have already known this, but I was quite intrigued by this and more than a little tickled. It’s not only your local airport: just because you asked, any U.S. airport will fire off a quick text to tell you what’s going on in the sky above. Perhaps you are a private pilot seeking some information for a jaunt near Nashville (KBNA 280653Z 18011KT 10SM BKN019 14/11 A29999 RMK AO2 SLP151 T01440111) or maybe you are a passenger wondering about conditions at your connecting flight in Detroit (KDTW 280653Z 15009KT 9SM FEW010 OVC017 08/07 A2986 RMK AO2 SLP113 T00780067=).

Let’s focus on the fifth grouping, SCT020 from my first example. This represents the type of cloud coverage (scattered) and the elevation of the base of those clouds in hundreds of feet (2000). I’ve learned Tampa often has a much lower cloud base than other airports, due to, I assume, its close proximity to the water. That is a bounty of information to have at your fingertips, representing constant watchful monitoring from complex technological systems. I know you can find this and many other exotic forms of meteorological data on different websites, but isn’t there a certain charm to having the arc of the sky reduced to six characters and delivered straight to your pocket?

Of course, those sparse digits don’t tell the whole story. If these systems were not solely automated, perhaps a human could spend their working hours gazing up at the sky and would add two more characters to the METAR, drawn from NOAA’s Cloud Chart.

27 different skies all represented with a letter and number. M2 would indicate altostratus, H1 cirrus, and L2 the indefatigable cumulus. More context, but still not enough. There is still no mention of how the light is refracting through the mist. No discussion of the colors swirling to the east or the glowing ribbons to the southwest. Barely a thought given to how it edifies you to feel whispering remnants in your hair of the breeze which soars gentle giants across the ether. That information, being irreducible to acronym, is irrelevant to the unfeeling instruments monitoring the clouds.

But I am watching them too.

I love clouds. I have OPINIONS on clouds. I love to gaze out at those wondrous constructs towering above the plains as I commute across the Everglades, marveling at the curtains of rain split by beams of light. Can you envision those times when wispy strands of cirrus are painted neon orange and iridescent pink against the bright blue of an early fall? Yuck, it looks so garish. Indeed, I much prefer the thick textures of blues and golds that appear as the afternoon wanes in midsummer. I am fascinated by the curious days in early spring where a mercurial yellow descends across the firmament from the west while an infant rainbow hangs to the east.

I watch the clouds above day after day, as does METAR. And when I spy a magnificent fluffy cumulus high above, the METAR sometimes begins to send out specific information it doesn’t often provide.

M TPA: TCU

A body of warm air starts to lift higher and higher, cooling as it rises. Water begins to condense upon the multitudes of dust particles which inhabit the atmosphere, microscopic nuclei that gather themselves in legions upon legions, hosts upon hosts as a column begins to stretch itself upwards.

M TPA PT: TOWERING CUMULUS

10,000 feet, then 20,000, 30,000, the column presses into the top of the troposphere, growing ever larger, ever darker as its head flattens into a grim anvil, straining in rage against the stratosphere.

M TPA: CC CA CG TS RA

Inside the monolith static begins to build, electrical forces groaning against one another until a blinding bolt splits the air in a thunderous fury that echoes over the earth.

M TPA PT: Cloud-Cloud Lightning, Cloud-Air Lightning, Cloud-Ground Lightning, Thunderstorm, Rain

It grows heavier and darker until the air can bear it no more, releasing a torrent upon the world

M TPA: CB

M TPA PT:

II. CUMULONIMBUS

During much of the last year, I have been engulfed by an awful cumulonimbus. It struck me down, it weighed upon me, it drenched me, it blinded me. And yet I cannot force myself to write off 2024 as a bad year, or a lost year. We have already had about two of those in this decade, and I cannot endure any more.

No, please, you know Gerry. He gets these clouds that come over him. They burst.

I am no stranger to a cumulonimbus, I often behave like one. As the windows of my house darken with rain, I gather mists around myself, dropping the barometric pressure of every room I enter. There is no thunder or lightning to speak of, and so I like to view myself as a harmless weather phenomenon. But I doubt those trapped under a dark cloud in the pouring rain view it as harmless.

My head started to work. The old grievance…I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Brett and my mind stopped jumping and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go by and way down the street, and then I went to sleep…It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

So here I am, trapped in a cumulonimbus from within and without. Well, I’m actually not trapped in one right now, I wasn’t able to write at all when I was. What changed? The first and simplest answer to how to deal with clouds that darken your horizon is to wait, survive, and have faith in the great mercy that clouds pass. They dissipate, they disappear, they vanish. But as surely as they pass, they will return. My father experiences these clouds, so did my father’s father. They will return. During this reprieve, how can I reflect on past storms and be ready for when the clouds gather again? How can I look back at swaths of my life and see more than an anvil of rain?

He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.

III. No Silver Linings

At the beginning of November I tried to change the oil on my truck. I’ve owned a 2003 Dodge Dakota, which after 260,000 miles I upgraded to a 2004 Dodge Dakota, and I’ve always changed the oil myself. But, and there is no way to emphasize this next statement enough, the oil filter was stuck. I hand tightened it on myself some months ago, and now it is stuck. Did I try an oil filter wrench? Yes, I did. Did I try a drill-attached oil filter claw? Yes, I did. Did I burn out that drill instead, yes. Did I try an impact driver instead, yes. Did I try wrapping a belt around it and getting over top for leverage or stabbing a screwdriver through the side and wrenching it around orusingWD40aroundittoloosenituporpourboilingwaterthroughapieceofhastilycutPVCpipetoheatupandexpandthemetalanddidyoucheckandmakesureyouwereturningittherightwaybecauseit’seasytogethatmixedupbutiknowicheckedatrilliontimesrightytightyleftyloosynothethreadsaren’treversedicheckedthattooortrytojamascrewdriveintothetopdiscofthefilterwhichismadeoutofahardermetalandusethatasachiseltodriveitaroundwithahammer? Yes, I did.

The oil filter was stuck. Actually, not really a filter anymore, it had buckled so much that I’d actually destroyed everything except the top disc. A tow was $75, labor cost in my area is an insane $140/hr, so taking it in was really not a financial option. That last option of trying to just hammer the disc around? I spent hour after hour, day after day hammering as hard as I could and then lying against oil-soaked pavement while my arm rested enough for another try. It looks so stupid typing it out but this quickly became a man vs. machine grudge match that I was going to do anything not to lose.  It’s my truck, something I know how to do, I’m not going to let some hack mechanic lift up my truck and blowtorch my engine to death for hundreds an hour trying to get the filter off, I’m going to fix it my way in my own driveway.

As you may note, there is nothing good about this situation. It is costly to my wallet, time, and body. It is frustrating and it is a wholly unnecessary complication to what should be a routine procedure. This does not end with me finding a loose screw that would have caused me to wreck going down the interstate, something that I never would have found without this filter problem. In other words, there are no silver linings here. There was nothing good about a lot of things that had happened to me in the last month. Frankly I thought this oil filter was going to be like when you can’t get your keys out of the door when your day has already been rough, or when you bite the inside of your cheek a second time; that it was going to drive me absolutely insane and I would have a complete nuclear meltdown.

IV. The rain on the tin roof was like little drummers, tapping away

Yet as I looked up at the remnants of my MicroGard while the back of my head became slick with 5W-30, something within me changed. I was happy, I knew I would fix my truck, I knew I would survive this issue, and I knew that meant I would have survived all the things that had just happened to me. Looking further and further beyond I had a confidence, not just that I would get the filter off, but that something else would break on my truck in a couple months and I would fix that too (turned out to be the hinge pins in the driver-side door). A confidence that as I was drenched, the sun would come to burn away the clouds, and then the rain would return to quench my thirst. Every time the cumulonimbus arrived to flay my body with lightning, my capacity for suffering would increase.

This made the cumulonimbus beautiful to me. I know we’ve all experienced the awe of seeing a storm approach, the comfy pleasure of hearing the winds and rain beat upon the roof. How deeply can we pursue this idea of appreciating the tempest? Can we see the beauty in the awful might of a hurricane if it knocks down and floods the house instead of passing over it? Can we have joy in pain when the sick family member dies instead of recovers? Can we enjoy the exquisite nature of dancing flames when they are burning houses instead of hearths?

I believe we can. If every drop of rain fortifies us against the next deluge, if every breeze sets us more firmly against the next gust, we can learn to bear up under mightier and mightier storms, holding our ground until the light breaks through.

⁵ I am the Lord, and there is no other,
    besides me there is no God;
    I equip you, though you do not know me,
⁶ that people may know, from the rising of the sun
    and from the west, that there is none besides me;
    I am the Lord, and there is no other.
⁷ I form light and create darkness;
    I make well-being and create calamity;
    I am the Lord, who does all these things.

Isaiah 45:5-7