Blizzard!

That's what we're having, shortly, if not already -- visibility is at 1/2 mile and falling -- and I was just watching some people in Marblehead standing and watching the harbor, waiting excitedly for high tide, when "the waves crash right over the street" and throw rocks as big as your fist onto the road. There were maybe four or five people on with the newscaster, including a couple of older folks (which will so be me when I am an older person) who drove in from the VT/NH border "just to experience the storm."

I understand that fascination. I remember going out more than ten years ago, after a hurricane brought the Atlantic ocean up over Rte. 1A in NH, with a schoolteacher friend. We parked our car in Portsmouth and walked in because the road was closed. The power of nature and of the ocean always amazes me, as does seeing the sea swallow up civilization.

Of course the flip side of "enjoying" this kind of weather are the truly terrible incidences, like the tsunami, and I think it is important to temper your excitement with the realization that for Mother Nature, at least at times, chaos reigns, and she'd kill you just as soon look at you.