"Early Winter Storm" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Early Winter Storm

I was surprised to find blue in the skies above. I was surprised to see anything but a heavy grey fog. Surprise, surprise, the forecasters had slipped another cog. It was supposed to be rain until the ark floated away, and here there was a break in the storming. I had not planned on it, but I took full advantage. At nine o’clock I was on my way into Tennessee Valley, virtually alone on this deliciously fresh early winter morning.

The hills were just donning the first hint of their emerald spring fashion, and after a night of wind and heavy rain, under the bright warming sun, one could almost hear cheers rising from the new flowers for this perfect tableau. The clouds overnight helped keep some of the day’s heat in the canyon, but I was glad to be wearing my bomber jacket on the two-mile walk to the ocean.

Darkening clouds of the next front massed above the hills, moving across the horizon. The radio had just insisted that we were done with showers for a while, and I believed them until I got all the way to the beach and felt some sprinkles. But even if the heavens had opened, it couldn’t have dampened the glory of the morning.

The ocean spumed raucously from the beach to the horizon, with swells climbing a dozen feet and more, powering skyward and smashing into each other, dying on the beach. It wasn’t even high tide, but the raging seas pounded the fifty yards across the beach to the end of the path. The sands strained a sea of trash, from bits of piers and tangled fishing line to the ubiquitous Styrofoam peanuts. If I were in charge, miscreant students and minor traffic offenders would be patrolling the beaches, cleaning up after the ocean.

A steady breeze from the north dominated the avian airways above the tumultuous swells, and two flocks of pelicans plied this coastal route, one headed up the other down. Those flying north moved slowly if relentlessly into the wind, like a plucky Cessna Skyhawk forcing its way into a gale. Their counterparts headed toward the Golden Gate sprinting like Learjets with a powerful tailwind.

Further south, past The Gate, by Ocean Beach at the west end of San Francisco, the Coast Guard was conducting rescue drills in the heavy seas. It was probably a good thing they were not a hunnert miles south in Monterey, where the waves heights approached thirty feet. I’d rather be up above the pelicans.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.