writing the weather

I love April snow.  It falls in fat, wet flakes that stick to the pine tops and melt on the ground, and for all of its bluster, there’s rarely more than a trace of it left the next day.  It’s winter’s last gasp, beautiful and comical and very welcome – especially here in the mountains and high desert of northern New Mexico, where we’re grateful for every ounce of moisture the skies provide.  Spring snow means full acequias and fewer wildfires.  It means life on overdrive.

Easter ’09 brought us a full weekend of the stuff, and today the peaks are covered in white.  It’s sunny out, now, and the grass is a brilliant green.  Spring’s here for sure, no matter how fierce the blizzard seemed two days ago.  But it was fierce.  There were  hours at a time when I couldn’t see further than a few yards away, and long stretches in the middle of the day when we had to turn on the lights to compensate for the gloom outside.

It got me to thinking about writing the weather.  It’s a handy way to describe a place, certainly.  It’s almost place-in-motion.  In the same way that describing a character’s gait and physical gestures will bring him to life more vividly than a physical description of that character at rest, weather animates place in writing:  makes it more participant than backdrop.

Relating seasonal changes can connote the passage of time.  A damp, drizzly November rain is worlds away from the hard-driving summer thunderstorm that shook the sky three months before.  And in the same way that weather can alter my mood, it can set or shift the tone of a scene.  (We don’t call mood and tone “atmospheric” for nothing.)  Some things need the softness of rain outside to be said.  A mild, sunny, blue-sky-scudded-with-clouds kind of day can provide contrast to a harsh and unexpected act or revelation.  Sometimes the weather works directly on characters:  wind can make people go nuts; earthquake weather sets them on edge; long periods of drought can drive characters into their corners to hoard what they have.  A flood –

Well.  A flood.

There’s that about weather, too.  The extreme event can change everything.  Raging, unpredictable weather can license a kind of wildness among characters.  All bets are off in a hurricane.  Extreme weather shakes things up; relationships can accelerate or explode, new plot lines fracture out of the sudden impact of a storm.  Things happen that can’t be undone.  Physical and emotional landscapes get mangled, and then somebody has to clean up the mess.

Last weekend’s storm wasn’t extreme, but it shouted a little to remind us that it could be.  It was exciting without ever really being threatening.

But it brought a reminder:  things can shift in a heartbeat.  Be ready.  And if that isn’t plot, I don’t know what is. 

 

Leave a Comment