Isaac's Storm (5 page)

Ships
directly
in
the
path
of
the
August
wave
got
a
different
view.
Each
wave
had
a
"period"
of
four
days,
meaning
a
ship
in
a
fixed
location
would
experience
a
cycle
of
weather
that
repeated
itself
every
four
days.
On
the
first
day
the
air
was
hot
and
dry,
like
a
desert
at
sea.
No
clouds,
but
also
very
little
blue
sky.
The
only
blue
was
directly
overhead.
Everywhere
else
the
sky
was
white,
the
horizon
like
milk
—
all
of
this
caused
by
dust
carried
from
the
deserts
of
Africa.

Soon,
however,
the
sky
filled
with
puffy
clouds,
Cumulus
humilus,
the
pretty
fair-weather
cumulus
of
the
finest
summer
days.
As
the
wave
advanced,
these
grew
fatter
and
taller.
High
clouds
arrived
next,
first
icy
cirrus,
then
a
gray
ceiling
of
cirrostratus.
The
skies
got
darker,
the
cloud
ceiling
lower.
A
fine
drizzle
began
to
fall.
A
squall
line
of
thunderstorms
followed,
cousins
of
the
great
storms
that
just
a
few
days
earlier
had
driven
the
shopkeepers
of
Dakar
to
seek
shelter.
The
storms
brought
thunder
and
lightning,
but
were
nowhere
near
as
intense
as
they
had
been
over
the
West
African
bulge.
They
dropped
the
temperature
at
sea
level
to
below
70
degrees.
For
anyone
acclimated
to
the
humid
warmth
of
the
tropics,
suddenly
the
air
was
downright
cold.
It
was
jacket
weather
on
Cape
Verde.

The
squalls
passed.
The
sky
cleared.
The
cycle
began
again.

WHEREVER
THE
AUGUST
wave
traveled,
it
dropped
the
pressure
exerted
by
the
atmosphere.
At
first
the
decline
was
slight,
but
soon
warm
air
flowed
upward
through
the
thunderheads
heating
the
air
and
reducing
its
weight,
thereby
reducing
the
pressure
it
exerted
on
the
ocean
surface.
The
heating
produced
a
basin
of
low
pressure
that
drew
air,
as
wind,
from
surrounding
regions
of
higher
pressure.
Meanwhile,
ambient
upper-level
winds
whisked
away
the
air
exiting
from
the
top
of
the
storm.
The
faster
the
upper
air
departed,
the
faster
the
lower
air
arrived.
A
few
clouds
became
so
immense
they
began
to
shape
the
behavior
of
the
entire
mass.

The
storm
could
have
continued
growing,
but
conditions
were
not
quite
right.
The
air
moving
from
its
top
had
begun
to
descend,
but
in
a
form
very
different
from
when
it
first
entered
the
storm.
Stripped
of
its
moisture,
this
descending
air
was
cool
and
dry.
Cataracts
of
spent
air
fell
toward
the
sea
beyond
the
boundaries
of
the
storm,
but
the
storm's
appetite
had
grown
so
large
it
now
summoned
this
air
as
well.
The
cool
air
became
caught
—
"entrained"
—
in
the
moist
sea-level
winds
rushing
toward
the
storm.
As
this
dry
air
mixed
with
the
moist,
it
banked
the
fires
rising
through
the
clouds
above.

For
the
moment,
the
system
stabilized.

IN
GALVESTON,
THE
humidity
was
nearly
one
100
percent.
To
move
was
to
drip.
It
was
too
hot
to
put
on
a
bathing
suit.
"Brown
is
the
new
color
for
bathing
suits,"
the
Galveston
News
reported
in
the
caption
of
a
photograph
showing
the
latest
in
coastal
chic.
"This
one
of
a
rich
leaf
brown
mohair
has
yoke,
collar
and
bands
of
white
mohair
striped
with
black
braid."

Mohair.

Every
day
an
ad
in
the
Galveston
News
for
Dr.
McLaughlin's
Electric
Belt
asked:
"Weak
Men
—
Are
You
Sick?"

MOST
TROPICAL
DISTURBANCES
dissipated
over
the
open
sea.
They
collided
with
powerful
winds
from
the
west
that
dipped
from
the
middle
latitudes
and
blew
the
tops
off
their
thunder-heads.
They
encountered
pools
of
cold
water.
They
entrained
so
much
dry
air
they
lost
their
passion.
Their
pillars
of
smoke
and
light
became
mist.
Most
of
the
time.

Occasionally
they
became
killers,
although
exactly
why
remained
a
mystery
even
at
the
end
of
the
twentieth
century.
Satellites
sharpened
the
ability
of
forecasters
to
monitor
hurricane
motion
but
could
not
capture
the
instant
of
transfiguration.
No
matter
how
closely
meteorologists
analyzed
satellite
biographies
of
hurricanes,
they
still
could
not
isolate
the
exact
coding
that
destined
a
particular
easterly
wave
to
a
future
of
murder
and
mayhem.
Satellites
could
document
changes
in
temperature
of
a
few
thousandths
of
a
degree
and
capture
features
as
small
as
a
foot
wide
or
a
few
centimeters
tall.
"But
suppose,"
wrote
Ernest
Zebrowski
Jr.,
in
Perils
of
a
Restless
Planet,
"that
a
tropical
storm
develops,
and
that
we
play
back
the
data
record
of
the
previous
few
days.
What
do
we
find
as
we
go
back
in
time?
A
smaller
storm,
and
yet
a
smaller
disturbance,
then
a
warm
moist
windy
spot,
then
a
set
of
atmospheric
conditions
that
looks
no
different
from
that
at
many
other
locations
in
the
tropics."

Zebrowski
proposed
that
the
answer
might
lie
in
the
science
of
"nonlinear
dynamics":
chaos
theory
and
the
famous
butterfly
effect.
He
framed
the
question
this
way:
"Could
a
butterfly
in
a
West
African
rain
forest,
by
flitting
to
the
left
of
a
tree
rather
than
to
the
right,
possibly
set
into
motion
a
chain
of
events
that
escalates
into
a
hurricane
striking
coastal
South
Carolina
a
few
weeks
later?"

To
Zebrowski,
the
fact
that
the
most
detailed
satellite
analysis
could
not
detect
a
trigger
suggested
that
tropical
storms
might
be
influenced
by
forces
too
subtle
to
measure.
He
noted
that
a
tiny
change
in
the
variables
entered
into
computer
models
of
hurricane
development
could
yield
dramatic
variation
later
on.
"One
simulated
storm
may
veer
northward
while
another
continues
westward,
one
may
intensify
while
another
is
dying,
or
one
may
stand
stationary
while
another
gallops
toward
a
shoreline."

Every
hurricane,
however,
had
characteristics
similar
to
those
of
every
other
hurricane.
Each,
for
example,
developed
thunderstorms
and
began
to
rotate.
In
chaos
theory,
these
points
of
broadly
similar
behavior
were
"strange
attractors."
Subtle
forces
could
launch
a
system
from
one
attractor
to
another
—
a
chance
gust
of
wind,
a
plume
of
hot
sea,
maybe
even
the
sudden
burst
of
heat
from
a
British
frigate
during
a
gunnery
drill
off
Dakar.

"Add
a
little
glitch,
a
metaphorical
butterfly,
to
a
complex
process,"
Zebrowski
wrote,
"and
sometimes
you
get
an
outcome
no
rational
person
would
ever
have
expected."

As
GALVESTON
STEAMED,
the
world
seethed.
The
Boxer
Rebellion
intensified.
The
British
public
grew
weary
of
the
Boer
War.
When
Boer
snipers
fired
on
a
British
troop
train,
a
British
general
ordered
every
house
within
ten
miles
burned
to
the
ground.
The
order
shocked
London.
A
madman
assassinated
Italy's
King
Humbert.
In
Paris,
another
assassin
tried
to
kill
the
shah
of
Persia.
Bubonic
plague
turned
up
in
London
and
Glasgow.
William
Jennings
Bryan
stumped
for
the
presidency
and
railed
at
America's
new
imperialist
bent,
in
particular
the
widely
held
belief
that
expansion
overseas
was
America's
destiny.
"Destiny,"
he
thundered,
"is
the
subterfuge
of
the
invertebrate..
.
."

The
speech
ran
on
for
eight
thousand
words.
Despite
the
heat,
the
house
was
packed.

THE
SEAS
WERE
busy.
A
few
ships
must
have
encountered
the
thunder
and
rain
but
apparently
their
crews
did
not
see
it
as
anything
unusual.
They
hung
canvas
to
catch
the
rain.
Steamers
raised
sails
to
save
coal.
Frigate
birds
wheeled
in
the
cantaloupe
dawn.

Galveston
spun
through
space
at
nine
hundred
miles
an
hour.
The
trade
winds
blew.
Great
masses
of
air
shifted
without
a
sound.

Somewhere,
a
butterfly
opened
its
wings.

DESPITE
THE
GREAT
demands
of
a
nineteenth-century
farming
life,
Isaac
and
his
brother,
Joseph,
remembered
the
world
of
their
childhood,
in
the
knob-hilled
terrain
of
Monroe
County,
Tennessee,
as
an
Eden-like
realm
through
which
they
wandered
with
little
parental
restraint.
As
a
hobby,
and
to
raise
spending
money,
Isaac
trapped
muskrat,
mink,
and
otter.
He
rose
early
to
check
his
traplines
before
his
daily
chores
began.
His
chores
began
at
4:00
A.M.
He
was
six
years
old.

The
Cline
farm
was
among
the
richest
in
the
knobs.
In
fall,
at
acorn
time,
passenger
pigeons
gathered
in
the
oak
trees
in
such
great
numbers
they
hid
the
treetops.
The
land
was
lush
with
apples,
peaches,
strawberries,
and
persimmons.
Ghosts
populated
the
black
places
under
its
forests.
Isaac's
uncle
swore
as
fact
that
once
during
a
hunting
trip
he
had
seen
a
headless
woman
who
told
him
she
was
searching
for
a
jug
of
whiskey
buried
fifteen
years
earlier
by
her
husband.
Stories
circulated
of
a
strange
apelike
creature
spotted
in
the
hills,
and
these
too
seemed
like
country
tales,
until
the
day
armed
officers
captured
a
naked
"wild
man"
and
penned
him
at
the
center
of
town.
Sinkholes
could
open
overnight.
One
swallowed
Joseph's
plow.
Another
turned
Boyd's
Pond,
a
swimming
hole
on
the
Cline
farm,
into
what
Joseph
called
"our
most
thrilling
devil's
haunt"
—
the
place
where
a
boy
was
said
to
have
boasted
he
would
"swim
the
pond
four
times
or
go
to
hell."
The
boy
finished
the
fourth
circuit
when
the
water
began
to
whirl
around
him.
He
struggled,
threw
his
arms
up
in
panic,
and
plunged
from
view.
The
law
of
convenient
epiphany
would
place
the
trigger
for
Isaac's
decision
to
become
a
meteorologist
in
the
funnel
of
a
tornado
that
swept
into
nearby
Fork
Creek
Valley
one
Saturday
night,
lifted
the
bed
of
a
sleeping
child,
and
deposited
the
bed
in
an
orchard
one
hundred
yards
away,
the
child
still
aboard
and
safe,
the
bed
intact.
Or
perhaps
in
the
great
skeletons
of
lightning
that
clutched
the
sky
so
many
August
nights.
These
things
played
a
part,
no
doubt.
Lightning
was
barely
understood,
tornadoes
not
at
all.
To
a
boy
in
a
land
of
ghosts
and
wild
men,
how
could
they
not
be
alluring?