a lena horne day

Well, that may be exaggerating just a tad.

We have had some thunder and lightning lately, but not a lot of rain.

For the past two days, we have had a very welcome soft rain that puts me in a London mood. That may be why, for just a moment, as I was eating my veal picatta at Simona's, I imagined myself in the St. James's Club dining room. (Or, more likely, that bit of spatial legerdemain was caused by Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz lying open next to my plate.)

Whatever it was, these last three days have been pleasant. Here it is, 5 PM with a cool 84 degrees under a fashionably gray sky. For this time of year, the combination is almost perfect. Neither fans nor air-conditioning are required.

But that type of hubris can mislead the unwary. June is the start of hurricane season in the east Pacific. Our most common visitors are tropical storms or depressions, but unlike Alan Jay Lerner's that in "Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen,"* they do happen here. And, during the summer, a wise observer keeps an eye on the horizon -- or, at least NOAA's National Hurricane Center.

I did just that this morning. We have already had two named storms this season. There are two more disturbances off the coast of Mexico vying for named status. Even if the one on the west side of the map turns into a depression, storm, or hurricane, it will most likely not come our way. It is possible that a pressure system could re-direct it back to the Mexican coast, but it is unlikely.

The far more interesting candidate is the one off the southern coast of Mexico, but it is still in its birthing process. Disturbances go on the map with a yellow "X" whenever there is a 10% chance of cyclone formation in the next 48 hours. That disturbance already has a 20% chance. The weather activity will either decrease and peter out, or it could increase.

If the disturbance intensifies, we might have a depression, storm, or hurricane on our hands. Or, Baja California may. The usual weather patterns push those storms north just offshore of Barra de Navidad. Now and then, they visit us.

So, we will celebrate our current bounty of weather -- knowing full well that they eventually may be a piper to pay. Or a Lena Horne to enjoy.


* -- Until I wrote that sentence, it never occurred to me that Spanish and Cockney share the dropped (or silent) "H."