On December 28, 2021, the author of the Area Forecast Discussion for the Reno office of the National Weather Service sounded positively giddy that a new record for December snowfall in the Sierra had been set: “New December all-time record for snowfall at the historic Central Sierra Snow Lab at 193.7” inches! [sic] Crushed the previous record of 179” of snow in December 1970.”
A few days later, the station manager of the Central Sierra Snow Lab, Andrew Schwartz, gave an interview to NPR’s All Things Considered, revealing that the final tally turned out to be even more impressive–214 inches, all the more “terrific, considering that,” said Schwartz, “you know, roughly a week to week and a half into December, we still had bare soil, bare ground up here.”
Californians, naturally enough, are hoping that that record snowfall will have put a real dent in our current drought, though as Schwartz pointed out, “it’s quite possible that the upcoming months are going to be drier.” Alas, since late December, there’s been almost no precipitation.
Scientists agree that climate change has made many California weather events more extreme, whether that means intensifying infrequent but powerful storms driven by atmospheric rivers of tropical moisture or driving the brutally hot offshore winds that drive the bouts of severe wildfires that feed on our drought-dried landscapes. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by such powerful natural forces that feel capricious because of the unpredictable local devastation they can cause, even as we try to remember that on a planetary scale, these are very organized forces.
So maybe it’s time to take another look at a classic of California literature, George R. Stewart’s recently reissued 1941 novel Storm, which Stewart biographer Donald M. Scott describes as “the first ecological novel and one that ‘gave readers a feeling’” for Stewart’s ecological vision as expressed through a narrative about the birth, growth, and eventual death of a drought-busting storm born in the Pacific Ocean somewhere southeast of Japan. The story is fascinating.
A contemporary reviewer captures this fascination by noting the meticulous attention to science and technology conveyed through a fictional vehicle, as well as the stunning descriptions of place. Writing for Pacific Historical Review, geographer Burton M. Varney captured the unusual mix this way: “For its portrayal of heroism in the line of duty, of what it takes to keep things moving in a pinch, for its passages of sheer loveliness and here and there of majesty or great pathos, Storm is a memorable piece of writing.” Passages like the following one may be what Varney had in mind, a depiction of California landscapes that still feels authentic. Drive along the Westside Highway section of Interstate 5 between the Grapevine and Tracy, and, in good years, you might still recognize the landscape almost exactly as Stewart describes it:
Early in November, had come “Election-Day rains.” Chilling after the warmth of October, low-lying clouds blew in from the southwest, thick with moisture from the Pacific. The golden-brown hills of the Coast Ranges grew darker beneath the downpour. In the Great Valley summer-dry creeks again ran water. Upon the Sierra the snow fell steadily. The six-month dry season was over.
Scott notes that the fascination with the book was widely shared. Storm was a best-seller, a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and a Modern Library Book. Translated into more that 20 languages, it sold millions of copies, and since its initial release, has been reissued several times, each reprint graced with new, appreciative introductions by such writers as Wallace Stegner and Ernest Callenbach. The newest, a New York Review edition just published, has a fine new introduction by novelist Nathaniel Rich.
While acknowledging its place as a pioneering work of ecological literature, I want to detour here to mark two other distinctions of the work that partly mark its place in popular culture, both distinctions derived from a name.
The first occurs very early in the book as a young Weather Service forecaster, the Junior Meteorologist, gathers data, watches the growth of the storm, and, as is his habit, gives the newly forming storm a name: Maria. It’s often noted that the practice of naming storms (originally limited to names for women) was inspired by Stewart. Roger Turner’s Picturing Meteorology blog includes a 1963 Weather Service bulletin, Notes on the Naming of Hurricanes, which documents Stewart’s influence: “The first written mention of the use of a girl’s name for a storm, as by a forecaster when studying weather charts, may have been the novel ‘Storm’ written by George R. Stewart, published by Random House in 1941. . . . During World War II this practice became widespread in weather map discussions among forecasters. . . .” This obvious sexism was somewhat ameliorated when, according to the National Hurricane Center, in 1978 male names were added to the mix for Eastern North Pacific Storm names and in 1979 when male names were included for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
Of the name “Maria,” Stewart wrote in an introduction to the book: “The soft Spanish pronunciation is fine for some heroines, but our Maria here is too big for any man to embrace and much too boisterous. So put the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce it ‘rye.’” The name of Stewart’s storm, then, is often said to have been an inspiration for the song, “They Call the Wind Maria,” from Lerner and Loewe’s 1951 musical, Paint Your Wagon. Stewart’s original storm, though, is a much bigger deal.
Destined to flow toward the Pacific Coast of the United States, the storm slams into the rain-parched state of California. While the water is certainly welcome, the dark power of the storm is not, as Stewart describes the devastation it brings and the lives it takes, its power especially dangerous for people who live in or are traveling through the Sierra Nevada near Donner Pass. Stewart shifts the perspective of the narrative constantly throughout the novel. Alternating between a seemingly objective point of view that wields the scientific language of meteorology and the more personal (and localized) points of view of various characters, the narrative gathers pace as the storm sweeps in from the Pacific and slams into California’s coast and then the Sierra—most notably old Route 40, part of the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway—which threaded through Donner Pass beginning in 1913. Parts of the highway still exist, but now Interstate 80 has taken its place as the major thoroughfare.
Most of the consequential characters receive no names but job titles instead, emphasizing how doing their professional work helps to blunt Maria’s threat and thereby protect the many lives in her path, alas not always successfully. As mentioned, the Junior Meteorologist not only names fledgling storms, but in his San Francisco office he gathers far-flung weather data in order to plot highs and lows on a map covering half the northern hemisphere. His boss, the Chief Meteorologist, oversees the forecasts upon which tea leaves thousands will make plans. Others include the General Manager of the Railroad, the Chief Service Officer at Bay Airport, and the District Traffic Superintendent of the long distance telephone lines, who all play a role in the story as they react to the dangers posed by Maria.
Perhaps the most arresting characters are those who face the storm most directly, such as the Road Superintendent, charged with keeping Highway 40 over Donner Pass open and bossing the operators of the plows and rotaries that make that possible. Even more compelling is the story of the telephone Lineman, whose work is repairing wires damaged in “any storm that blew.” Their work is undertaken in daunting, dangerous blizzard conditions which overwhelm the region and nearly erase from view the 1930s era engineering miracles—highways, bridges, railroads, telephone and power lines—that sprawl across California and the west. Similarly, the recent December storms brought equivalent conditions to the same area, overwhelming our more modern infrastructure. As the National Weather Service reported, “Crews are battling fallen trees and power lines as well as 7-day snowfall totals of 6-11 feet. Holiday traffic volume is also impacting the effectiveness of the roads reopening.” We can appreciate that not much has changed since the setting of Storm in the late 1930s.
With the approach of Maria, the Road Superintendent has his hands full. Drivers attempt the pass; some, refusing to believe that tire chains are necessary, spin out and block traffic. Plow operators, experienced truckers, even an occasional civilian who keeps a clear head and braves the elements to help clear a lane, all earn the respect of the Superintendent, who directs their efforts. But their efforts—and their equipment—ultimately are no match for the relentless storm:
Darkness had come on, and the snow was falling as fast as ever. The lights from all the plows and cars that were there were playing on the slide. The men on top looked small and black as ants by contrast with the great white heap. The rotary was throwing its great arc. And all around, the flying snow reflected back the lights, and shut off the little scene of activity from all the world outside.
Finally, Donner Pass must be closed. For the Road Superintendent, it’s a bitter defeat, suffered within a dark compass of astonishing beauty:
That night no car went east or west. From Shasta on the north to the Tehachapis on the south, every pass was blocked with snow. Unbroken, the long Sierra thrust its peaks into the air; where the mountains rose highest and boldest against the sky-line, there the age-old battle of air and rock raged most fiercely. The snow swirled around the pinnacles; it settled deep in draw and chimney; it drifted across the ledges. From the peaks trailed off through the air the mile-long snow-banners.
The story of the Lineman may be the most arresting, though. Early in the book, before Maria reaches the Sierra, a solitary owl, following “whatever force controls the destiny of owls,” settles upon a wooden cross arm set upon a telephone pole that also supports a high-voltage power line. With the tip of a wing feather, the owl grazes the line:
A crackling flash of blue-white light illumined the mountain-side. Then came darkness again. In the darkness the scorched body of the owl tumbled to the ground, a few feathers drifted off in the breeze; from the wire a faint emanation, as of smoke, rose momentarily.
Later a wild-cat picked up the owl’s body; he carried it away from the smell of man which clung to the pole and made a meal of it at his ease.
This incident may seem like a deadly encounter between predators from the non-human world and human infrastructure encroaching into largely non-human space. And it is. But it’s also more than that, since the “flash of blue-white light,” it’s later revealed, has weakened another line attached to the cross-bar, a telephone line, which weakness leads to its failure as Maria, manifesting as a powerful blizzard, slams into the area and the lines become encrusted with heavy ice, breaking the weakened one. The Lineman, who knows nothing of the unforeseeable chance encounter between an owl and a power line, finds the break in the weakened telephone line and sets to repair it.
After climbing the pole, the Lineman undertakes its repair, and Stewart’s narrative is meticulous in describing the process of repair, dangerously perched near the top of the pole:
Detaching from his belt a little block-and-tackle, he fastened its ropes to the two parts of the broken wire, and tugged with all his strength. By means of this added mechanical power he was able to pull the wire almost to the tautness of the others. He snipped off the excess length, and by the aid of another copper sleeve joined the two ends permanently. Then he unfastened the block-and-tackle, and again attached it to his belt. With some of the extra wire he fastened the mended wire to the insulator. The short length which remained he dropped carefully to the ground, taking care that it did not tangle with the other wires. The work was done.
Unfortunately, as the Lineman begins to descend the pole, his climbing iron slips: “He whirled round as he fell, his coat flew open; with no protection but his shirt and underwear he lit squarely with the middle of his body upon the tops of his two ski-poles. One pole might have given way, or been pushed into the soft snow, but the two poles together thrust stiffly against his diaphragm, just below his heart.” The vibration of the impact causes nearby trees to let loose the snow trapped in their branches. The Lineman struggles, but eventually he loses his life.
These types of stories—localized struggles embedded in the larger narrative—were a particular point of pride for Stewart, who had done an impressive job of first-hand research. “At Donner Pass, in the floods of the Central Valley, and in the storm-lashed cities,” writes Scott, “he rode with and talked to those who bore the brunt of the storm.” This oscillation of perspective among characters in Storm builds upon a theme that, I think, is too often not fully appreciated. It’s obvious that Stewart wants to show how much power the storm’s natural forces draw to itself, seemingly overwhelming an overmatched humanity. But that’s not the whole picture that emerges, or even the main point. Sure, during her 12 day life Maria is pretty much in charge, at least as she gains strength before the forces that organize that awesome power lose focus and the storm falls apart:
Whether the civilization of a land withdraws before the storm or fights against it, the end will be the same. Man is of the air, and the air must rule him. Drought or flood, cold winds and ice, heat, blown dust, shift of the storm track—in the end they overcome even the imperturbable machines.
Still, the forces available to earth-bound humans “of the air” aren’t insignificant, thanks to human imagination as expressed variously in the pursuits of science, technology, and art, as well as human qualities like loyalty, steadfastness, and most of all, the will to organize. In Storm it’s always infrastructure week, a small bulwark of hope for the Californians thereby protected. It’s also these human pursuits and qualities that, in our own time, have led to our increasing recognition of human-engineered contributions to climate change and its attendant consequences. So, not always in a good way, perhaps humans aren’t so powerless after all, a theme clearly implied even if not explicitly addressed in the book.
Despite the decades that have passed since Storm appeared, the world Stewart depicts—especially the terrain around Donner Pass—will be recognizable to anyone that knows the areas where the book is set. In the Sierra the winter landscape that Stewart offers will feel extraordinarily authentic:
Upon the Sierra each tree after its kind withstood the storm. The aspens that bordered the high meadows, the alders and the willows along the streams—these had flared with autumnal yellow, and now raised against the winter storm only bare branches, skeletons upon which the snow found small lodgment.
The fir trees rose in tapering pointed cones. Their broad thick-set needles held the flakes, until the trees grew solid white. So perfect was their cover that around each trunk, beneath the shelter of down-sloping branches, was a cup in the snow, a refuge for the hard-pressed grouse and rabbits where sometimes even bare ground was showing. Beneath their loads the fir trees stood stiffly—like Puritans, prim and uncompromising—saying between tight-drawn lips, “We shall not bend, though we break.” And often they broke; the over-strained trunk, brittle in the cold, snapped like a match, and the tree lay in ruin.
Just as authentic is the depiction of the vast human-designed infrastructure and the protocols designed to manage it, engineering projects that Stewart shows mitigating the threat of the storm. In Storm the infrastructure may be analog (there’s talk of vacuum tubes, teletype machines, and slide rules), but even in our digital age, much still depends upon human ingenuity and even brute strength.
Of course, as Blair Braverman points out in a recent review of the new release, in an era of climate change “the idea that weather is the one thing humans can’t influence seems quaint, and the thought that we might instinctively band together against an existential threat, naïve.” But it seems to me, finally, that Stewart helps us to at least wrestle with the scope of the problem. And we really have no choice but to measure it according to whatever imagination—informed by art and science—we possess.
It’s now the end of a mostly dry February, and once again, there’s not much rain in the forecast. . . .
Sources:
Area Forecast Discussion. National Weather Service, Reno. Dec. 28, 2021. Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University. https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=AFDREV&e=202112281021. Accessed 29 Dec. 2021.
Area Forecast Discussion. National Weather Service, Reno. Dec. 29, 2021. Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University. https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=AFDREV&e=202112282140. Accessed 20 Dec. 2021.
Braverman, Blair. “Heavy Weather.” The New York Times Book Review, 5 Dec. 2021, p. 67 (L). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/books/review/lean-fall-stand-jon-mcgregor-storm-george-stewart.html. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.
Schwartz, Andrew. Interview with Adrian Florido. All Things Considered. National Public Radio. January 2, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069784229/california-record-snowfall. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
Scott, Donald M. The Life and Truth of George R. Stewart. McFarland, 2012. Kindle Edition.
Stewart, George R. Storm. 1941. Intro. Nathaniel Rich. New York Review Books Classic, 2021. Kindle Edition.
“Tropical Cyclone Naming History and Retired Names.” National Hurricane Center, April 9, 2021. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_history.shtml?text. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.
Turner, Roger. “The Original Storm Named Maria, 1941.” Picturing Meteorology. https://picturingmeteorology.com/home/2017/9/26/the-original-storm-named-maria-1941. Accessed 19 Jan. 2021.
U. S. Department of Commerce Weather Bureau. “Notes on the Naming of Hurricanes.” U. S. Government Printing Office, March, 1963.
Varney, Burton M. Rev. Storm by George R. Stewart. Pacific Historical Review. Vol. 11, No. 1, March 1942, p. 129. https://doi.org/10.2307/3633043. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
“First Snowfall” courtesy Annette Elrod.
