-9

This one's for you, Harrie.

There are two bank thermometers a block apart in Iowa City. In the afternoon the US Bank thermometer, because it gets some daytime sun, consistently reads about 10 degrees higher than the Midwest One thermometer. And right now the US Bank thermometer is reading "-9".

People who say "talking about the weather is boring" has never lived in the midwest. Science fact right there. This weather shit is fucking epic. People write books about the Iowa weather, and you know what: the books are actually pretty good. I probably will never experience anything as intense as weather in Iowa. And I've been to concentration camps.

In fact, I was going to catalogue, right here, the intense weather that I've experienced in my six years here, but I realized it would've taken too much time.

But for example, the Saturday of flood week last June I was part of a large crew of sandbaggers working by the University library. I was in a chain of people moving sandbags down towards the levee. After doing this two hours, a guy with a megaphone tells the crew that there is a severe thunderstorm warning and that we must leave. So we go to a bar. And the baseball game on the bar TV is interrupted by the local weatherman, saying that we're in a tornado watch. I go outside and there are two shirtless people. One minute the wind blows and it is humid, and then another minute the wind blows in the opposite direction and it is crisp and dry. Then it hails. Then I look up and clouds are moving in all kinds of directions, forming a funnel cloud. The people I am with decide we should all take off our shirts so we do and we flash cars. Then it is sunny, then it rains again. It is downpouring across the street but sunny and warm on our side. The bartender is blaring country music. Every cloud in the sky, of which we have a clear view, is moving in a unique direction. The funnel cloud is to the south. Then the funnel cloud passes.