Peter the Meteor(ologist) - 5. You Can’t Please Everyone

Something in the air
Maybe for the only time in my life
Something in the air
Turning me around and guiding me right

And it's a prime time, maybe the stars were right
I had a premonition, it's gonna be my turn tonight
Gonna be my turn tonight

Alan Parsons Project - 1984

14

I shadowed Keith the rest of that day. He showed me how to navigate the viewers to see all the different options. The whole setup was impressive. There were twenty-five monitors that could show each of six views of overlapping sections of the Atlantic Ocean and its surrounding land masses: plus, five spares. All were able to duplicate their displays on one of six large screens and a matrix of nine on the walls. Think of a view of Google maps covering three point two million square miles, sixteen hundred by two thousand each. There was a map typical of what you'd see on television, with the models overlaid, each of which could be isolated. Then there were satellite images from essentially directly above the storm, and from each of the four major points of the compass. These four gave one somewhat of a side view of the area.

Over the course of the day, Natalie stayed on the likeliest path, based on her speed, I knew it wouldn't be until late that night where she would begin to drift slightly to the south of the southernmost model. Jonathan came into the observation room at four o'clock as expected. He took Keith aside first. I didn't hear their conversation, but Keith later told me he asked what he thought of my knowledge. I was given good marks by Keith. Then Jonathan came to where we were sitting.

"Keith says you know your stuff. Any new information you can impart?"

"Not much, only that later tonight, as Natalie is passing Great Abaco Island, Bahamas, she'll begin to drift south of the North American Mesoscale model, which is currently the one that predicts the southernmost landfall."

"Can you tell what time that will be?"

"I would say roughly midnight, give or take perhaps ninety minutes."

"I know this may be asking a lot, but would you be able to come back, say around ten and sit with one of our overnight crew?"

"I made plans, but I'm sure I could be here around ten or shortly thereafter."

"Perfect. Have you gotten your visitor's credentials?"

"Yes, Desiree brought them in after lunch."

"Great. I'll let you get out of here now. When you get back, ask for Adrian Harper, he's the overnight supervisor. I'll give him a head's up to expect you."

"I'll do that. And tomorrow?"

"Can you come back, say ten hours after you leave tonight? Let's call it noon?"

"Of course."

Jonathan made note of my cell number and email address so he could communicate with me at any time. I was obviously feeling good about potentially getting the job.

15

I went back to the hotel in a great mood. I was impressing Jonathan, and I had a date that night with a beautiful woman. I was nervous about the date, so I stopped at a local liquor store and bought myself one of those tiny bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey and drank it a few minutes before calling Rebecca. Before that, I stopped at a local Walmart and picked up a pair of jeans, two more shirts, and a pack of underwear and socks. I had canceled my flight for Thursday morning, but wasn't exactly sure when I'd be leaving Friday, so I needed another change of clothes. That, and I didn't want to wear my suit that night. That turned out to be a good plan.

It was still a little before five, but I remembered Rebecca's comment about being on time twenty minutes early, so I gave her a call. She answered immediately, "Hello PC."

"Hi Rebecca. How are you doing?"

"Great now. Yourself?"

"Floating on air."

Excited, she queried, "You got the job?"

"Not exactly, but my predictions got me another day in Miami. I'll be going back in tonight, tomorrow, and Friday morning at least, to monitor Natalie with them."

"That's awesome. I'll want to hear all about it."

"You will. Did you make plans?"

"Yes. I hope you don't mind hanging around at the mall; there's a lot to do there."

"Whatever you want, I'm flexible."

"Good. I was figuring on dinner at Rotelli Pizza & Pasta, then catching part of the Panthers game at Sports & Social."

"That's fine. I don't know much about hockey, but if that's what you want."

"I figured since they were playing the Stars, they're from Dallas, it might be interesting."

"Sounds good. What time do you want to meet?"

"Now?"

"Um, yeah, okay. I can take a walk to the mall and meet you at Rotelli's after I freshen up a bit and change."

I heard the smile in her voice, "I had just pulled into the hotel's parking lot when you called. I'll wait for you in the lobby."

"I'll hurry, then. See you soon."

"Looking forward to it. Chao!"

I took my suit off, yanked the tags off the jeans and a shirt, and washed up a bit. Six minutes after we hung up, I was in the lobby. She was dressed casually, so we matched in that regard. I walked up to her and gave her a hug and a quick kiss on the lips. We started walking out to her car.

"You look nice. Regular school clothes?"

"Pretty much. I stayed at the school after classes, I figured why drive home and then all the way back up here."

"Is the school close to here?"

"Yes, about ten minutes away."

We continued the small talk until we got to the restaurant, and I told her about my day.

"It would be so great if you got the job, I'd hate to never see you again."

"Yeah. Meeting you makes going back home difficult."

"Well, hopefully you'll be back soon. If you do get the job, let me know and I can start looking for a place for you, maybe halfway between here and my place. Wait. Where is the hurricane center?"

"Seventeenth Street, about ten minutes south of here."

"Awesome, I live in Kendall West. It's southwest of here. We find you somewhere in the middle and it's probably ten minutes either way."

I was ecstatic the rest of the evening. She was making plans for us to continue to see each other if I was able to come back. I considered looking for an NBC affiliate in Miami and applying there if I didn't get hired by the NHC. Steve may not be too happy about that, but I'll cross that bridge if I get to it. We finished dinner, went to the sports bar and watched the first two periods of the hockey game. I enjoyed it. Likely because I was with Rebecca, but at least partially because of the game.

She dropped me off at the hotel, even though it was only a short walk. We had a goodnight kiss. This one lasted quite a bit longer than the first two. It was only a little after nine, so I went inside to relax for a while before heading back to the NHC.

16

At quarter to ten I headed to the NHC. At that time of night, my GPS app told me it would take nine minutes. It was right. After parking the rental car, I walked into the Atlantic Observation room at exactly ten o’clock.

I looked around to see if I could pick out Adrian without shouting, ‘Which one of you is Adrian Harper?’ It was pretty easy, six people were sitting at terminals and another was standing in their midst. He heard me close the door and turned toward me.

“Mr. Harper?”

“Yes. You must be Peter. You can call me Ade, everyone else does.”

“Hello then, Ade. Pete’s fine. I believe Jonathan spoke with you?”

“He did. So far, Natalie hasn’t done anything surprising. I’ve got you set up on the station there to the right of Carolyn McCarter.” He pointed at a terminal at the right end of a line of five.

He introduced me to the rest of the overnight team and asked that I keep a close watch on Natalie’s leading half. It was quiet until a minute after eleven when I noticed the first departure from the North American Mesoscale model.

“She’s started drifting south of the model, Ade.”

“Karyn, put Peter’s view up on screen three, please.”

She did so, Adrian asked, “Can you zoom in just a little tighter, Pete?”

On the larger screen the deviation was a little more obvious. From that point forward, everyone was focused on the apparent new path.

“Drift appeared right about where Jonathan said you thought it would. Mighty impressive. And you just ‘see’ this?”

“Yes. It’s like a white line appears in front of me indicating the actual path.”

“What’s next?”

“Another slight southerly turn just past Grand Bahama. And then straight on to just south of Indialantic Ocean Beach Park.”

Adrian stepped out just before midnight to send the latest status out to the world.

We watched Natalie for another two and a half hours. Twelve miles past West End, she was on a direct course for Indialantic Ocean Beach Park. Adrian sent me back to my hotel, knowing I was there at ten o’clock the previous morning.

Thursday morning, I grabbed an early lunch and was back at it at noon, as requested. When I arrived, Jonathan was in the Atlantic observation room, discussing the night’s happenings. Then he noticed me coming in.

“There he is, the Hurricane Whisperer. Too bad you can’t direct them away from land.”

“I wish I could. But then that live report wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic.”

“Can’t argue that. We have Natalie covered, do you think with a little help, you’ll be able to plot Octavious’ path into the computer?”

“Sure, I can show someone exactly where he’s going, and they can program it in.”

“Awesome. Let me get a programmer in here.”

He made a call and two minutes later, someone new showed up, “Raymond Arnold, this is Peter Noonan. If he gives you a course, how difficult would it be to add that to the trajectory view?”

“Is he that Hurricane Whisperer guy?”

“That he is.”

“It’s simple to add the calculations, but we’ll have to give it a name so it can be retrieved by all the systems.”

“Since you’ll be programming it with Peter’s help, let’s call it Arnold-Noonan. But there are no calculations. It will just be data points for Octavious.”

“Hard-coded?”

“Yes.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. He can see the actual path.”

“I’ll do it, but I don’t want my name associated with any of that mumbo-jumbo.”

“Whatever, call it Noonan-Barclay. It’ll be gone after Octavious.”

“Okay.”

I followed Raymond to his desk. He was not happy to be doing this, “I don’t know what kind of bullshit you’re slinging here. I’ll print a map; you draw a line and sit there and shut up. I don’t want to listen to how you pretend to know where it’s going. One lucky guess and you’re the fucking expert.”

“Fine.”

I did what he asked, and he programmed it in. I was curious what he would think about it in a few days when Octavious hit.