Winds of Winter

“Eight million esteyn,” Merith Amézel said, gazing out at the blanket of white dusted across the plaza, hiding the mosaic that, on clear days, reflected the Thunderbird Applied Meteorology logo. “Eight million. That is what your damnfool stunt cost us.”

A cough came from behind him, but he didn’t turn.

“Let’s recap, shall we? You retasked three orbital mirrors and four echelon mirror systems to heat the ocean and put moisture into the air, along with creating shepherding air currents to ensure the moist air traveled along the right path and gained enough altitude to freeze. You redirected upper-atmosphere vectors across half the southern continent to put a cold downdraft in the right place to drop the ground temperature, and then deployed half the local fleet of cloud-seeding drones to ensure it precipitated out as snow directly over Cant Maris. Then used the same systems again to wrench those upset weather patterns mostly back into place. Do I have that right?”

“I also,” a soft voice said, “had the area swept with laser brooms to make sure we had a clear, bright sky today.”

“And you had the area laser-swept.” He turned, at last, and fixed the dar-e’sevdra standing before his desk with a gimlet eye. “At a total cost of eight million, one hundred and forty-two thousand, nine-hundred eighty-five esteyn, and requiring your co-workers to spend something like the next two months working overtime to get the ripples damped. Would you care to justify this series of actions?”

The feathers on his errant Regional Weather Supervisor’s wings ruffled, but she stood firm, and looked him in the eye. Merith approved.

“No justification. I take full responsibility for my actions, and -“

“No, Regional Weather Supervisor Leiril, I’m not looking for a formality to put on your contract termination. It’s your motives that I want to know.”

“The new colonists.”

“The ones who came in from Tessil on Wind-Carried Leaf?

“I had a few drinks with a group of them a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about never seeing snow at Winterlights on Tessil, and how disappointed they were that they still wouldn’t, Cant Maris being in the southern hemisphere, so I thought maybe….”

“…you could give that to them?”

“Yes.”

Merith’s lips quirked. “A rather better reason than most. Very well. Consider yourself relieved of duty for the next two weeks, and we will be exercising clause 4/v/i of your contract with respect to a penalty equivalent to two months’ average consideration. Dismissed.” He swiveled back around to face the window, and the blanket of snow beyond.

What!? I, uh, mean – what? The cost…”

“Did you think you were the only one?” he said, noting approvingly a group in the distance negotiating the terms of a snowball-deléhain. “We’ve given ourselves near-godlike command of the forces of nature, and temptation is what it is. Everyone who’s ever made it to Senior Regional Supervisor has a wild-weather incident on their record, so we budget for them. One wild-weather incident,” he added warningly. “But we can hardly be more severe to you than we all have been to ourselves.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” She paused for a moment. “If I may ask – what was yours?”

“Extreme skywriting.” Merith grinned at her over his shoulder. “Look it up in the records, if you like. Now leave an old man to watch his clients play.”

Meteorology

“Good morning, Talentar, and welcome to the second day of Severe Weather Disposal Week! The ecopoesis operations team tell us they’ve got a lot of moist air to dump, so the theme for the day is wet, wet, wet!

“Up in the northern highlands, expect torrential rainfall in the vicinity of the Antíval Basin. Flood defenses around the basin rim will be operating and the flood barrier at the northern end of the Antíva Canal will be closed until flash runoff from the storms has been dealt with. In related news, three spillways have been opened in readiness at the Ontaron Cut Dam, and both dwellers along and users of the southern Antíva Canal should be prepared for high water levels and flow rates from the Dam as far south as the Isifer Bay Wetland Dispersal Structure.

“Residents in the Five Valles and in particular in the vicinity of Quinjano should be prepared for severe fog and high water levels in the Fivefold River as cold spillover descends into the valles. Visibility is expected to be negligible in the region, and highway/skyway oversight has issued a safety advisory recommending curtailment of all non-automatic flight in the region, as well as manual driving on the TI-1, TI-3, and all TV routes. Also, put on your cold suits outside even if you’re not going up on the Altiplanum; the chilling effect will be harsh.

“An unscheduled hailstorm and associated mudslide have forced temporary closure of two lanes of the TV-5, 870 miles south of the polar ice mines. Repairs are already in progress, but traffic should avoid the area until a further announcement is made.

“Finally, in unplanned weather, a localized dust storm blowing down into Kirinal Planum has closed the westbound carriageway of the TI-2 with a sanddrift. Normal service should be resumed within an hour, but for the moment westbound traffic is at a standstill, and eastbound traffic delayed as people slow to see this piece of classic weather. Folks, keep driving, please! You can replay it later at your leisure. Also due to this storm, travelers in the region between Suléyn Dome and Marusí Vallis as far south as Meltwater should check their vehicles or breather masks are rated for level three dust and fines.

“That’s all today from us. Thank you for listening to Talentar Imminence, and here are a few words from our sponsors…”

Storm

There were people on Phílae who had a sense of caution in the face of nature.

That was amply evident from the architecture of Lower Landing, which was all in the classical style of the first colonists; long, low, heavy buildings of stone and vitredur, aligned from sea to land, hunched and buttressed to withstand even the winds of a tropical Phílae hypercane, much less the mere megastorms that made landfall on polar Rokírvess, and able to be sealed with doubled doors and valved vents against their burial a hundred feet below the accompanying storm surge.

There are also people on Phílae with no discernable sense of caution at all.

This, in turn, is made amply evident by the citizen-shareholders of Lower Landing, who – under a storm-blackened sky lit only by the blue glow of the city’s kinetic barriers, lashed into incandescence by 200-knot winds and the coruscation of Éjavóné‘s best lightning without end, to the muffled sound of thunder and the syncopation of deep drainage pumps forcing seepage back out against the pressure of an ocean humped twenty, thirty feet high against the shimmering wall, filling the air with faint, salty mist – chose to throw a party on the beach.

Black sand, good food, excellent wine, a brief stretch of calm water – and the prospect of a watery grave should… well, should enough components of a triple-triple redundant system fail, and yet.

Sometimes, we can be a bloody stupid people. But, to our credit, at least it’s a glorious kind of stupidity.

– Cíënne Cassel, My Voyage Diaries

 

…And Other Clichés

“…and the vacuum is hard out today.”

A joke so old it’s evolved sophoncy independently from the primordial slime, but interface vehicle pilots evidently have to say something about ambient conditions at the highport. It seems that talking about the weather comes pre-hardwired into every sophont species’ cognome – whether or not there is any.

– A Star Traveler’s Dictionary

Trope-a-Day: Talk About the Weather

Talk About The Weather: Played straight, even with 3/5ths of people living in habitats in space, many planets requiring domes on the surface, and various other situations existing where the weather is entirely programmed, and even when that is not the case, weather generally being regulated to avoid serious problems.

(After all, you can’t please everyone all the time with a shared resource, and so everyone can generally find some occasion to complain that those cor-rieshka down at the Office of the Atmohydrosphere can’t find their own kveth with both hands and a packet of nanolocators.)