IT’S REALLY “BLANKING” RAINING TODAY

Some of you regular readers may recall that I like to make up my own words for things. Sometimes I make up new definitions for old words, like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass:

“There's glory for you!”
“I don't know what you mean by ‘glory.’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant ‘there's a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn't mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’ ” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master -- that's all.”

Sometimes, I make up words for things that I wish to write about, but there simply aren’t any existing words for them. Coincidentally, most of the words I invent, either brand-new ones or those to replace existing ones that I don’t especially like, have to do with weather. Maybe it’s because I write a lot of poetry, but I find that the English language is really under understaffed when it comes to words for weather in general, and poetic words for weather in particular. We’ve all heard that northern aboriginal peoples have many words for snow, doubtless because of where they live, there's a necessity of knowing the precise conditions they’re venturing into at any given time.

One weather event that does seem to have good roster of terms is ‘rain,’ but though English gets points for having good variety, almost nobody agrees on what name goes with what level of precipitation, so we are all kind of left to our own Humpty Dumpty devices on a rainy day. Here, in no particular order of wetness, are some of the choices:

misting (or wee mist), drizzling, spitting, pouring, sprinkling
light rain, mizzle (mist + drizzle?), downpour, sheets, buckets, cats and dogs…

Finally, here is a word I made up replace the pre-existing weather term virga, which is rain you see in the distance that appears to sweep down like fringe, but doesn’t actually make it to the ground. Fringe of rain = frainge. Now, I realize that there is nothing wrong with virga, per se. In fact, it's a fairly common surname. But still, for fringes of rain in the sky, I thought we could do better. Feel free to use it to impress your friends…

You: “Oh look at that beeeyootiful frainge over the mountains!” (or wherever you happen to see it).
Friend: “Frainge? What’s that? Where?”
You: (feeling a bit chuffed) “You’ve never heard of frainge? Let me explain…”

Now, I just need to figure out what it's doing outside at the moment.


Virga photo from Wikimedia Commons

WHO HAS SEEN THE THE HUMIDITY

We experience many different weather phenomena here on the north shore. Everything from simple dew to frost, fog, rain, snow, sleet; everything from gentle wafting breezes to gale-force winds. All of them leave some kind of visible "calling card" - only the wind is essentially invisible. Still, we are always aware of its presence, as Christina Rossetti so famously put it:

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

So even though it's not a solid thing to be seen, we feel like we actually do see the wind, too. But what about humidity? There is no visible difference between yesterday's oppressive morning and this one, which dawned bright and refreshing. Apparently, no on can see the humidity.

Then I thought about how it felt yesterday, when the humidity was way up there. I don't know what the actual percentage was, but what do numbers matter when the air feels so close it's like someone is literally breathing down your neck, and every other part of you. And people aren't the only ones feeling it. The cats stretched themselves out, being uncharacteristically quiet all day. The new dishtowel I put out felt limp, even though is just came from the dryer, my Bic pen slid differently across the paper, and the ink even looked different, darker, bolder, against the white. And when I didn't like what I'd written, and balled the paper up, it crinkled without making a sound. This morning, the summer humidity is back down to tolerable levels; I could tell that the instant I woke. Over coffee I started thinking about it. It may not be as poetic to think of a limp dishtowel in place of wind-tossed trees, but the evidence of humidity's invisible presence is just as "visible" as that of the wind. But I don't think I want to write a poem about it. And if I did, it would probably be a really cranky, whiny
one. High humidity isn't a thing to wax poetic about around here - just ask Elliott.