Everybody remembers right after the Loma Prieta quake. The city emptied out as the tenderfoots ran away back home to the safety of Tornado Alley. The problem is, every region in America has its own unique climate hazards. In San Francisco, ours just happens to be seismic. For a coastal city, we are blessed because the Pacific Ocean is so big it doesn’t warm up like the Atlantic and hurricanes are relatively rare this far north, El Nino and La Nina notwithstanding. We also aren’t forced to survive Arctic freezes, although the heat domes do seem to be getting closer, lasting longer, and we do occasionally hear about tsunami warnings. Once, around 1983, there was an earthquake in Southeast Asia so all along the Pacific Rim, there was a tidal wave watch; in San Francisco 2,000 people went down to the beach — to spectate a tidal wave. Climatologists described this as Nature’s delicate way of weeding out the stupid. Like people who climb hills to watch fires.
Old-time San Franciscans have perfected a surefire method to encourage visitors who over-stayed their welcome to contemplate returning home by walking outside on a warm, still morning and casually remarking, “Damn! Feels like earthquake weather,” although there is no such thing. Or is there? Admittedly, the concept of an earthquake is scary. With no advance warning, the ground beneath you starts shaking, then a chasm appears, you fall in, and it slams shut. At least with twisters there is radar and horns and warnings and stuff, and hurricanes can be seen from days away. Nobody would ever give somebody’s name to a temblor. They are the Loch Ness monsters of natural disasters. Never seen, only encountered. And we who live here have come to an understanding. Our movie would be called, “Dances With Quakes.”
We’ve also become Richter irregulars, able to estimate the scale in a matter of nanomoments. “Whoa, that was a light buttery appetizer of a shake, probably around a 4.1.” And the damage is always biblical. “This sliding glass door has come completely off its rails.” “Look at this Hallmark store. Cards strewn all over the aisles.”
New weather phenomena enter the lexicon annually like the new fangled heat index, which is the exact opposite of the only decades-old wind chill and the atmospheric river, which means lots of rain.
