Zeros

How was your weekend? Did you spend it standing proudly beside a sizzling barbecue grill, channeling your inner Hank Hill , or were you staring out the window like Charlie Brown , watching another weather forecast ruin your plans? Summer weekends have a funny way of turning into either unforgettable memories or stories that begin with, "Well, that didn't go as planned." For many people, the perfect weekend is simple. Fire up the grill, invite family and friends over, put on a playlist filled with everything from The Beach Boys to Dua Lipa , and enjoy those long daylight hours before Monday comes knocking . There is something timeless about the smell of burgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, and barbecue sauce drifting through the neighborhood. It's almost cinematic , like the backyard scenes in Stranger Things before everything goes sideways. Of course, Mother Nature doesn't always get the script. One minute the forecast promises sunshine...

Life & Occasions:  Ugly Shoes for Nothing It's a graduation year. The weather didn't get the memo. Neither did my feet. There's a rhythm to adult social life that anybody who lived through the AM radio era understands instinctively. You have your wedding years and your graduation years , and they alternate with the kind of cruel predictability that used to get worked into the bridge of a Dionne Warwick song. This is a graduation year. Which means outdoor events, potluck tables under a canopy that is slightly too small, and a sky that has been threatening since Thursday. You know how it goes. You stand in the closet for twelve minutes trying to thread the needle between festive and waterproof . You land, as you always do, on the shoes that look sensible. Not glamorous — you abandoned that when you saw the forecast — but at least not embarrassing. Except they are embarrassing, because the ones you own that look comfortable are not. The ones that actually are...

Nature Just Blew the Roof Off — And She's Coming Back ▪︎ 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. Ei...