Chaotic Sky
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Like many residents of Alaska, Weather Notebook Commentator, Amy Mayer is often ispired by the weather. As Amy tells us today she draws powerful lessons and images from the landscape, including the sky.

Until I came to Alaska, the weather was pretty concrete - it was raining or It was sunny. The sky was clear or it was cloudy. Then I hit Fairbanks and everything changed. I noticed on certain days, I could see many kinds of clouds - puffy and billowy ones, stretched cotton candy, and dark, threatening storms. Maybe a rainbow arcs through it. I see all this at once and I'm perplexed. My confusion turned into a fascination. What does this mean? I asked around, and meteorologists told me they have a name for this - chaotic sky.

It happens when warm fronts and cold fronts collide. On a weather map, you'd see a red line and blue line overlapping to form a purple one.

I find this inspiring and also overwhelming. It's a fitting metaphor for life - the ideal of peaceful co-existence with seemingly incompatible beings sharing the same space. Then I feel overwhelmed by the incongruity of it all - sun with rain, dark and light. Yet all that different weather makes an incredible display. The chaos is an even more apt representation of our world. People, similarly varied, hope for peaceful and brilliant moments when their lives intersect.

Grey skies are dreary and clear days are happy, but chaotic skies are oddly human.

Commentator Amy Mayer studies the sky at her home in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. The program is underwritten by Subaru of America.