Barometric Pressures

By A.E. Bayne

“Temperatures are hovering in the teens, winds moving out of the southwest at 30 mph. This storm we’re tracking is setting up to be a monster, so we advise people in the viewing area to take precautions when going out in the morning. Stay indoors if you don’t absolutely have to get out in this mess.”

Snow. That’s what Tad the weatherman just predicted, and a lot of it. Tad! What a jerk-off name. Thaddeus is even worse. Thaddeus Van Hoffenberg. I went to school with good ol’ cock- of- the- walk Tad.

“Ptew!”

I spit at the screen. The gelatinous loogie made a slug trail across Tad’s affable face. What an asshole. Every week, end upon end, I’ve watched his bullshit weather reports, craving some continuity, longing for a modicum of accuracy. Is it such an enormous thing to ask for a weather report upon which I can rely; to be told, “Yes, rain tomorrow, a 50% chance of showers in the morning, ending by noon,” and then to actually wake to rain sloshing through my gutters; to whistle while I pull on my Gortex raincoat and unfurl my golf-sized umbrella with the Sunday Times printed on it? I don’t think it is.

I didn’t always feel this way about Tad, truly. Tad was an amiable guy through school, if a bit simple. He was an average Joe, making his way through the daily montage of gossip, teen angst, and jockstrap noogies in the locker room. He and I were even lab partners during our year in chemistry class. When I saw the screen pan over to him while watching the weather last year, my initial thought was one of gleeful surprise; hey, I knew that guy, Tad.

Tad had developed a certain charisma in the years between high school and his career in meteorology. Gone were the wiry glasses and forehead pimples, the too-long pieces of stubble and the mottled cheeks. No, this new Tad was tan and bleach-tipped, with sparkling green eyes and DayGlo dentures. This tad wore Armani and spoke with the crisp accentless dialect of a newscaster. He gestured fluidly to the green screen behind him, flawlessly pointing to Colorado, then Michigan, then Florida. This Tad spoke with authority, the voice of the gods, “The weather tomorrow will be…” And so it was, for a while.

I remember Tad’s first miscalculation last spring because I felt it as keenly as if it had been a personal affront. It was early April and I had plans to go golfing with my father who was battling esophageal cancer. Dad had just come through a second round of chemo in January, and he was gradually feeling steadier on his feet. Instead of wallowing in lethargy on the sofa each day as he had since the chemo ended, he had started to travel around a bit in the house over the past week, moving from room to room with the padded shuffle of his Dearfoams. I thought it might be beneficial to his spirits to take him over to the golf course for a half an hour, drive him around and let him watch me knock a few across the greens. He was up for it, so we flicked Tad’s report on the night before we headed out and hoped for the best. Tad was on our side, for he forecast clear skies and a light crisp breeze to temper the 80 degree day. Dad smiled; I smiled; Tad beamed.

The next morning, light filtered in through the curtains in the kitchen window, projecting a lacy pattern on the countertop to its left. I peeked outside and was satisfied. There were a few stray clouds playing tag across the saturated sky, but none looked a threat. I gathered Dad’s catheter bag and I.V. stand, helped him on with his windbreaker and brown felt fedora, and we made our way out to the car gingerly, tentatively.

We drove in relative silence, only remarking that we lucked out with the weather. Closer to the golf course I shot a wary eye out the window, for the random playful clouds of just an hour before were gathering like gawkers at a crime scene, joining and breaking, then rejoining the fray. Dad noticed my nervous glances and sucked in his breath in disgust.

“Damn,” he cursed.

“Naw, Dad, come on. Tad reported clear skies. They’re just passing clouds. Hey, every cloud and silver linings and all that. Maybe it won’t be so hot.”

Dad nodded furtively, bobbing his head at uneven intervals, his I.V. bag bouncing with each movement.

I pulled up to the front portico of the club and a staff member rolled a wheelchair to the passenger door. After a bit of lifting and positioning, we had the chair, catheter bag, I.V. bag and my father situated. I tilted my head up to the sky to witness grey nimbus clouds blending with the crisp white borders of their cumulus cousins.

“Did the forecast change?” I asked the staff member, Chip.

“Not that I know of,” he said, “Last night they called for clear skies.”

“Who called for clear skies?” I asked.

“Excuse me?” He looked perplexed.

“Who, exactly, called for clear skies last night?” I pointedly stared into his quizzical eyes.

“Um, you know, the guy, the one on the weather.”

He turned to push my father up the wheelchair ramp.

“You mean Tad.”

“What?”

“Tad, the guy, the one on the weather,” I mimicked back.

Chip furrowed his brow, cocked his head and curled his lip, “Um, yeah, that one.”

Tad! I expelled his name like a curse. How could he? He knew my father. He’d been to my house, for god’s sake. How could he come out with such an undeniably wrong forecast? Was this some kind of sick joke? My face grew hot and I hugged my arms tight across my stomach with elbows grasped.

“Let it go,” my father said softly.

Chip waited for me to follow. My father’s pleading gaze pulled me up the ramp to fall in step, and I acquiesced out of respect for his condition.

By the time we rolled Dad across the club’s foyer and into the restaurant that overlooked the outside dining area and greens, large drops had begun to plop onto the flagstone between the stately covered tables. We decided to wait it out for a bit, but my father’s strength waned and he soon asked to go home. It was the last time he left the house until the day the ambulance carried him to the hospital to die.

Now, you could make the case that anyone can make a mistake. Meteorologists are often sketchy at best with their predictive powers. I ask you to consider this though: with all of the technology that backed Tad Van Hoffenberg, how could he have called a perfect day from what turned out to be a 48 hour deluge resulting in mudslides, flooded streets, and downed power lines? What act of God materialized out of the miasma of the cosmos to turn Tad into such a charlatan?

Unfortunately for Tad and everyone in our viewing area, this was only his first of many faulty predictions.

The summer following the golfing disaster, Tad called bright skies and balmy breezes on July 4th. Multitudes gathered at the local soccer fields to watch rockets flare and to barbecue with family and friends. At approximately 8:45 P.M., lightning shot across the sky, first at some distance and then closer, painting the sky a crackle glass finish. The crowd darted across the open fields like mice in lamplight, but the lightning took no prisoners. In just twenty minutes, four people died and ten others were seriously burned by Thor’s wrath. The next day, Tad was back on the television giving an ambiguously technical explanation of the freak storm. Atmospheric conditions right for the event my ass! You made a mistake, Tad! Just admit it.

In September of the same year, Tad showed graph after graph of hurricanes through the ages, explaining that conditions were primed for it to be one of the worst tropical weather seasons in recent history, if not all of recorded history. In fact, he said, the storm center was tracking a behemoth as he spoke. The camera switched to a monitor showing a swirling vortex off the Atlantic coastline, barreling toward Cuba. Tad recommended that people living in coastal areas flock to the stores like so many flamingos and buy all manner of supplies and lumber to barricade their homes and stock their pantries. Lowes and Home Depot sold out of plywood and Duct tape in three days. Grocery store shelves were bare of milk, bread, and eggs. News broadcasters jumped on the lead, sending up-and-coming reporters to the east edge of America to be buffeted by gale-force winds and whipped by sheets of rain and hail. Then, nothing. We waited, holed up in our houses with candles and generators ready. The storm never came.

Tad explained the next day that the storm had decidedly turned north, fickle sea anomaly that it was, and would coast its way up toward Nova Scotia over the course of the next two days. The meteorologists in New England would take it from here. Smile. No worries. Grin. Wow, we really dodged that one. Chuckle.

Lowe’s would not take my plywood back, and the extra milk and eggs I bought with my last $20.00 went bad.

Tad!

I considered that there might be others like me; people who were frustrated by Tad’s ineptitude at weather prognostication. I flew to the Internet, searching for chat rooms with names like “Tad the Big Turd” or “Townies against Tad.” I found only two negative comments about Tad’s weather forecasting: one from a woman who didn’t like the way he pronounced her home town, and another from a viewer who commented on the number of times that Tad used the words “weather event” during a show. While I have to agree that the latter complaint was fair, it didn’t support my vehement feelings of disenfranchisement and injustice in light of what was supposed to be a higher power that was in the know about all things weather related.

Since September, Tad has made a few minor weather faux pas: a miss on a first frost that cost the orange growers millions, a snow shower that turned to rain, and a month of warmer than usual dry weather that contributed to two out of control brush fires. But now, he is back to his old grandiose predictions. A blizzard of the century such as we have not seen in our generation. Snow up to window sills; roads closed for days. Stock up on fire wood. Pull out those old generators from September. Buy the milk; buy the eggs. Bring in your pets. SNOW!

I open my front door and breath deep the winter night. The scent from the moldy, ashen leaves tingles in my nose, and a waxing gibbous bobs high above the trees. There are clouds, streaming in from the distance like smoke from chimneys. Their tendrils are spider legs stroking the sky, crawling forward and pulling the larger front that follows. Tad, could you be on to something? I close the door and consider the alternative. We are all just gods in our own right.