Weather Vain?

Summer’s melting mountain ice-cream.

Weather Vain?

“It’s been perfect!”

“That’s exactly what the hydrologist said!” Jim replied.

Jim Palmer and I were sitting at a table having a little personal celebration of life.  It was lunch at one of our favorite restaurants near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon.  Our view, through floor to ceiling windows, was one of a raging Big Cottonwood Creek.

We were watching water that had begun its flow high in the Wasatch Mountains just about nineteen miles east from where we were sitting.  From its source, to its natural outlet into the Jordan River, it will have traveled twenty-six falling, curving and cutting miles.

“The water will crest sometime between three and four a.m. tomorrow morning.”  Jim continued.

“Really?”  I said in surprise.

“Yes.  The peak snow melt occurs during the warmth of the afternoon and it takes the water about that long to reach the valley.”  Jim explained.

I had been marveling at the perfect water year while sitting with Jim, staring at the magnificent, dancing water.  That vision and those thoughts were what led me to describe our winter and spring weather pattern as “perfect.”  I didn’t know, at the time, that Jim had recently attended a water planning meeting, as a Salt Lake County Planning Commissioner, where they had been briefed about the likelihood of potential flooding due to warming temperatures which had begun a higher velocity of melting the vast high elevation snow pack.

“We’ve had cooler spring temperatures than normal, right along with the higher than normal snow pack.  That allowed the low and mid-level snow pack to percolate into the drought starved ground until it was saturated.  And, that has allowed the higher elevation snow pack to melt and then run over saturated ground into accommodating rivers and streams.  It didn’t all come down at once!”

“It’s been perfect!”  I marveled as he spoke.

“That’s exactly what the hydrologist said!” Jim replied.

The creek below us prompted my mind to consider additional descriptions of its function.  At this moment it was acting as a sort of weather vane, a visual demonstration of our current weather.  It was also acting as another type of vein, a channel transporting water from Wasatch Mountain peaks trough Big Cottonwood Creek, to the Jordan River and on to the Great Salt Lake. Finally, I thought of how it was also potentially a symbol of human vanity.

How many of us had been tuned in to the miracle Jim and I had been discussing during our personal celebration of life.  Have we become to vain as to no longer see and cherish the importance and wonder of how our weather has given us such a marvelous gift to end the drought?

Have we become weather vain?