Random reminder

Press, 26 November 1980, Page 30

Random reminder

WEATHER WISE

His father is a meteorologist, a man given to lengthy unsettled periods and occasional storms that leave the household atmosphere steaming like the West Coast drying out after rain. His mother tries to keep a brave, or at least a warm, front up during the cyclonic disturbances, knowing that when a little pressure has been dissipated a warm and calm high can settle over the region for days. A-bright young lad xvith a scientific, particularly meteorological, vocabulary ■way beyond his years, he still has not learned to turn his collar up against the cold east wind of his father’s moodiness and wait for the sun to shine again. Yet, generally, they get on well and do a lot together, going on picnics and outings and commenting in terms almost incomprehensible to the outsider on the cloud cover, the likely pressure gradient, the micro-climate, the macro-

climate, the synopsis, etc., where others of his age might be chatting about model aeroplanes, football stars, or space comics, his young conversation is scattered with references to cumulo-nimbus, cumulo-stratus, cirrus, cirro-stratus, jet streams, and mackerel skies. Amid the scientific jargon a sense of humour is developing, too. Recently his father was away on a training course in Australia, having left home during one of the periods of turbulence that have occasionally caused the barometer of their personal relationship to plunge. His mother told him excitedly to get his coat on and drive with her to the airport because his father was at that very moment flying home from Sydney to Christchurch. “I see,” he said. “A deep depression is moving quickly east across the Tasman.”