🌴In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle, the Lion Sleeps Tonight 🦁
▪︎ Your Faithful, Furious Correspondent
Remember that 1985 Foreigner track, I Want to Know What Love Is? Beautiful. Soaring. Totally unprepared for what comes next. That's exactly how millions of Americans felt when Friday the 13th — yes, that date — delivered one of the most savage windstorms this continent has seen in years, and then had the nerve to whisper: Round two is Sunday.
Let's get the numbers on the table, because they are genuinely unhinged. Winds at Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport topped out at 85 mph — that's EF-0 tornado territory. Pittsburgh's airport logged a gust clocked as its fourth-strongest on record outside of a thunderstorm. In Wyoming, a spot near Chugwater recorded 109 mph, the highest wind speed Cheyenne's regional airport has ever measured in 30 years of using modern equipment. Thirty-two semi-trucks blew over on Wyoming interstates in a single day. Eighteen-wheelers, just lying on their sides on the highway, like discarded Matchbox cars.
And it wasn't just the heartland. Hawaii was hit simultaneously by a Kona low, with gusts of up to 80 mph toppling trees in Honolulu, triggering landslides, and knocking out power to 130,000 customers. Montana and northern Idaho? Trees straight through rooftops, power poles snapped like matchsticks, school closures from Libby to Troy. One person died in a wind-driven wildfire in Nebraska. This storm didn't pick favorites. It was America's Got Talent of weather events — it performed everywhere.
"Power outages could reach the hundreds of thousands to millions, coming just days after a powerful windstorm swept from the Rockies to the Northeast." — according to AccuWeather
As of this morning, tens of thousands of FirstEnergy customers in Ohio are still dark — and the utility has told some of them to sit tight until Monday night. Think about that. You've been without lights, without heat, without the ability to play your old cassette dub of Born in the USA since Friday morning, and the best they can offer is: maybe Monday. The city of Cleveland opened warming centers. In March. In a city where people are supposed to be getting ready for spring.
And then along comes Sunday. AccuWeather is calling the incoming system a March megastorm threatening nearly 200 million people. Blizzard conditions in the upper Midwest. Severe thunderstorms from eastern Texas to the Ohio Valley — including the same battered neighborhoods still running on extension cords from the last round. Forecasters are warning of damaging winds from the Florida panhandle straight up to New England, tornadoes possible in South Carolina through Maryland on Monday, and potential power outages stretching into the millions.
Look — Mother Nature has always had range. But right now she's doing back-to-back shows, with no opening act and no intermission. If you've still got power as you read this, maybe think about filling a bathtub, charging your devices, and locating whatever battery-powered radio you've got in a closet somewhere. Because that old thing might be your only link to the outside world before this week is done. And honestly? There are worse ways to ride out a storm than with the classics on AM/FM.
