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Weather Permitting
Mon Mar 07, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Our Irish correspondent, Chuck Kruger, tells us how island life is dominated not only by the weather, but by the weather forecast.
When you live eight miles out to sea on a little Irish island of sixteen
hundred acres and a hundred fifteen full-time residents, you become
sensitively aware of the fine print governing some of the most critical
undertakings of your way of life. Just two words: weather permitting. Those seemingly innocent words, for example, follow parenthetically the ferry
sailing times. Departure daily at 9:00 a.m., weather permitting. Return
from mainland daily at 5:30 p.m., weather permitting. Hm.
Right now the slates are beginning to rattle, the wind is whining around
the gutter pipes, the smoke’s blowing back down the chimney occasionally
and coming out into the living room in little puffs, the sound of the
harbor wash begins to resemble a muted roar, and the cat is hiding under
the sofa so that we might forget to put her out for the night. These signs
all make us wonder whether we’ll be able to make any of our mainland
commitments tomorrow. And, if we’re lucky enough to get out, and make that
long-awaited doctor’s check-up, will there be a ferry back? Or will we be
marooned on the mainland?
Not that we leave the island that often, as we’re most content with the way
of life here on Cape Clear, where the postman puts our mail on the living
room table whether we’re home or not, where we leave the keys in the island
car just in case someone might need to move it, where we take a meandering
nature walk every day, weather permitting.
The Weather Notebook is online at www.weathernotebook.org. Thanks to our longtime sponsor, Subaru of America. We are produced by the Mount Washington Observatory.
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