After the storm...

My internet got reconnected this AM, so here I am. Phones are still out, and probably will be until at least Friday, but hurray for cell phones and call forwarding (which Verizon actually got wrong three times, due to forgetting a "1" at the beginning of the number when keying it in).

And, of course, I am exceedingly grateful for the electricity that charges those phones, and runs everything else in my house too. Shout out to all those out there who still don't have power. The family who was staying in our basement got theirs back overnight- we'll miss them, but happily. (One of the boys in M.'s class calls himself a refugee. They were planning on staying put at home until the baby woke up the first morning blue in the face.)

S. gave me a science lesson as to what happened here. I knew that when it snows on a bunch of trees that still have leaves, those leaves will catch more snow, thus making branches more likely to fall. But apparently, the sap in trees tend to use fall to run back into the trunks and larger branches, strengthening them.

And since we didn't seem to get much fall, the trees are actually weaker. Which is how four to six inches of snow can make large branches bend, and split a tree so that each branch falls and splits off in a different direction. And how on almost every block, there's a tree on a car. And the street sides are lined with fallen pieces of trees. And there are fallen power lines all over the place, and... The cleaning up is taking ages, but how could it not?

So that's the science of snow in October. But there is, of course, more. My neighbor said to me, "Hashem is reminding us that He runs the world." I answered back, "Yeah, He's been doing that a lot this year." There has been so much weird weather in weird places, places that aren't prepared for it because it's unusual. And now in weird times, when not only the people and man-made structures but even nature isn't ready. For a farmer, that can mean the end of the crops they've worked for all season. Here, it means chaos.

So I think the world is going somewhere different now. Not that things like this have never happened before. But with so much... it feels like the world is at least somewhat reverting to the chaos in which it started. There's a major transition coming. I feel it. I don't know what it will bring.

Hopefully something amazing. Because if there's one thing all people have always been able to talk about, it's the weather. Things like this bring everyone together. Let's see what happens now.