The Best Weatherman Decides Which Way the Wind Blows
The Weather in San Angelo by Josh Riedel
The weather in San Angelo had been 72 and sunny since the day he arrived. The weatherman spent his first few months in town studying historical data and analyzing weather models in an attempt to solve the mystery of the newly formed microclimate, but no clear explanation emerged. Nobody seemed to mind. They were simply grateful that he had come and brought with him these endless days of gentle sunshine. Such appreciation was completely new to the weatherman. He’d spent the first nine years of his career in a Midwestern town he hated, where he was blamed regularly for tornadoes and floods; his former neighbor even billed him for the hail damage on her new truck. Maybe he deserved this new gig, his wife Lori suggested. Maybe San Angelo was his reward.
To celebrate one year in their new town, he and Lori went out to dinner at the local Moroccan restaurant. The hostess guided them to their favorite table, outside near a small fountain in the courtyard. As they dined, he was pleased when a gentle breeze drifted in from the north-northwest, as he forecasted that morning.
“All the stress I carried with me has totally evaporated,” he told his wife after the meal, as the waitress poured mint tea into their tiny glasses. “I honestly feel like I could do anything.”
“So you’re ready?” she asked, leaning forward.
The steam from the tea fogged his lenses. He wiped away the condensation with the end of his shirtsleeve. “Are you?”
Five chromosomally normal embryos, frozen in development, waited for them inside a lab somewhere in Utah. They’d banked them three years ago, after the miscarriage, but decided to wait on the transfer until Lori passed her real estate exam. Then delayed the process further when he snagged the job in San Angelo.
“I want to try,” she said. “Who knows, if you do for the implantation what you do for the weather, we may have a baby by Christmas.”
He squeezed her hand, delighted by their decision but also bristling at the suggestion that he did anything more than simply predict the weather. It was an absurd notion, that he had a certain power over the local climate, and yet he couldn’t deny that he’d considered the possibility, if only in passing. The weather in San Angelo had been unusually temperate since they arrived. “We’ll take a bottle of champagne to go,” he told the waitress, as the breeze picked up and snuffed out the candle on their table. “Rain is on the way.”
The weatherman and Lori shared the champagne on their walk home, laughing and stumbling through the serene streets of San Angelo under a star-studded sky. “Meteor!” Lori shouted, pointing up at what seemed like cosmic confirmation, a sign from the heavens that the life they wanted—in a pleasant town with a house they owned and a baby in their arms—was as likely as tomorrow’s sunrise.
His impromptu prediction for rain that evening didn’t pan out, and when he ran into the waitress at the café the next morning, she called him out on his miss. Lori’s comment at dinner stuck in his mind. Despite what the latest models indicated—clear, sunny skies for days on end—the weatherman, trying to redeem himself, guaranteed that rain would arrive later that evening, a forecast he later reiterated to his viewers. That night, when the weatherman stepped out onto his porch and held out his hand, small drops of precipitation landed in his open palm. It was the last rain that would fall in San Angelo for months.
The wildfire came in November, after their third unsuccessful embryo transfer. He almost missed it. He’d stopped double-checking his forecasts about six months in and hardly bothered consulting the models anymore. But on his walk to work that morning, a strong gust of wind flung his tie over his shoulder. Discarded cigarettes and newspapers tumbled down the empty street. Why hadn’t he worn a windbreaker?
At the station he studied the models and reviewed historical data on Novembers in San Angelo going back a hundred years. There was a day like this one 78 years ago, after a similarly long drought, and on that evening heat lightning sparked a wildfire up in the hills. He called Lori to tell her he had to stay late. He also asked her to pack a go-bag, just in case.
That evening, he forecasted something other than calm nights and smiling suns. A fire was imminent.
Lightning lit up the sky on his walk home. An orange glow blossomed high up in the hills. The swirling red lights of firetrucks twisted up the road towards the blaze. Smoke blanketed the night sky, and the winds gained strength, threatening to carry the fire west, into town. The weatherman couldn’t help but feel responsible.
The failed transfers had distracted him, the rising hope that came crashing down—not once, not twice, but three times. He worried about Lori. So fatigued from the influx of hormones, her life was in a holding pattern, waiting for a baby who refused to come. He worried about himself too: he wasn’t sure, after the three failures, if he could do a fourth—but those two perfectly viable embryos were still there in Utah, waiting their turn. Who knew their fate, or how Lori’s body would respond. It was all so unpredictable, out of his control.
The winds picked up, as he’d predicted, and the fire raced across the hills.
Desperate for a solution, the weatherman recalled the impromptu forecast for rain he made the night of their celebratory dinner at the Moroccan restaurant—his prediction hadn’t panned out until he announced it the next day, on television. At the time, he briefly considered whether his influence on the weather was somehow tied to his television appearances, but quickly dismissed the theory as outlandish—why would it matter whether he was on air? But now, with a wildfire threatening San Angelo, he saw no other option but to make an emergency forecast and hope his theory was right.
He ran back to the studio and convinced the night crew to let him on. Although he had no evidence to prove it, he forecast that in a matter of minutes heavy rain would fall in the area, enough to put out the fires but not enough to cause flooding or landslides. He would have never dreamed of pulling such a stunt as a rookie weatherman, back in that Midwestern town he hated, but his confidence had grown since he’d arrived in San Angelo.
Within the hour, the rain poured down, and the fire stopped.
Houses were saved, gardens were saved, the lives of horses and dogs and humans were saved. He was relieved, and in awe of his power.
The next morning, at the studio, his boss called him into her office. “You’re not like other weathermen, are you?” she asked.
“I don’t understand,” he said, wondering how much she knew.
“The people of San Angelo love you,” she said. “You’ve brought this town endless days of pleasant weather, and then you stop a wildfire?”
“You think I stopped it?” he asked, stunned.
“You made the forecast. That’s all that matters, right? Viewers associate you with the weather, good or bad. How long have you been a weatherman? You must know that.”
The weatherman understood that something more was at play here. He’d been fascinated with storms and tornadoes and floods for as long as he could remember, since he was just a kid in Nebraska. After years of studying models and analyzing patterns, he was convinced he’d reached a deeper level of intimacy with the movement of clouds and jet streams. The weather was a part of him.
He was convinced he’d reached a deeper level of intimacy with the movement of clouds and jet streams.
His boss searched through papers on her desk. “That’s precisely why I’m irritated with them for stealing you.” She handed him a letter. “They want you on the ‘Good Morning Show.’”
The “Good Morning Show” was the last of its kind, the only national broadcast that still reserved space for the weather. It was the reason the weatherman applied for the job in San Angelo in the first place, to work for a network affiliate that might propel him to the national stage. But he didn’t forecast success to come this fast.
That evening, when he showed Lori the offer letter, she popped open the fancy bottle of sparkling cider they’d been saving for when one of the transfers actually worked. “Finally, good news,” she said.
The next morning, on his drive up the coast to the studio in Los Angeles, he watched the sun climb over the peaks in the east, lighting up a band of cirrus clouds in purples and pinks. A week before, the appearance of the thin, wispy clouds would have delighted him for their beauty alone, but now all he could think about was whether the clouds signaled an approaching system, and where that system might land. He needed to look into high-altitude winds and study the topography of this area, only half an hour from his home in San Angelo but meteorologically foreign to him. He needed to learn so much about so many new places. He stepped on the gas.
At the studio, he stood in front of a green screen and introduced himself to the nation as their new weatherman. It terrified him, thinking about all those people watching, millions spread across the country, in all different climate regions. Overseeing the weather on the national stage, he realized, would be infinitely more complex than his local gig.
At his desk, he requested special reports from his team of data analysts and researchers. He studied Arctic weather patterns, the Aleutian low-pressure system, and the currents in the Gulf of Alaska. He read up on pollination cycles in the Central Valley and predator-prey relationships in the Southwest. It was an obscene amount of pressure, to know that you have the power to save towns from disaster, if that was indeed what was going on. Simply bringing about a rain shower or a modest change in wind direction, as he had in San Angelo, wouldn’t be enough. His domain expanded well outside of that climatically hospitable town, and he might now have the opportunity to do so much more: end droughts, disperse tornadoes, divert hurricanes. Calm the effects of climate change. In the glow of his monitors, he zoomed in and out on high-resolution maps late into the night, waiting to feel the weather move through him, as it had in San Angelo.
The work was exhausting, and after only a few weeks, the atmosphere of his marriage shifted. Lori dined solo at the Moroccan restaurant, leaving him leftovers in the fridge, which he ate over the kitchen sink alone when he finally arrived home. Unlike during the previous three cycles, he had to skip their check-ups at the clinic and left Lori on her own in the evenings to inject herself with progesterone. The weatherman apologized and told her he wanted to be there, but in truth he needed to keep this fourth cycle at a distance. If he hadn’t seen how those endless sunny days in San Angelo led to a wildfire, he might not be so vigilant. What might happen now if he let his guard down? A tornado could rake through Oklahoma, a blizzard could devastate Wyoming—and he’d only have himself to blame.
In the days leading up to the fourth embryo transfer, a hurricane formed in the Gulf. Not since the wildfire had he faced an event of this magnitude. After all those hours studying jet streams and pressure systems and regional climate patterns, this was his first real test. He monitored the system closely as it escalated from tropical disturbance to depression to storm. It was a wonder, watching it evolve. Wind speeds increased, thunderstorm activity concentrated near the center, and the storm’s circulation intensified. Refusing to leave the studio, he waited expectantly for the eye to form.
By the time the storm strengthened into a full-fledged hurricane, with that clear, visible eye at her center, he knew Audrey—as the World Meteorological Organization had christened her—intimately. She whirled over the waters of the Atlantic, pushing towards the coast. The weatherman knew by instinct what she would do; there was no more need to consult his reports or models. “The hurricane will weaken significantly before she hits land,” he told his viewers that morning, then in the afternoon, and again in the evening—but no matter how intently he insisted on this prediction, he could not get the models to agree with him. He debated warning everyone in Audrey’s path to evacuate, but where would he tell them to go? If he was wrong about her intensity, he might be wrong about her trajectory, too.
The timing for such complications wasn’t ideal. The fourth embryo transfer was the same day Audrey would hit land—but despite his forecast, Audrey slowed, delaying her arrival while she gathered strength and structure over the warm ocean waters. Her movements, more unpredictable than he’d anticipated, swirled his sense of time, and he missed the transfer.
He escaped the studio and rushed back to San Angelo when he realized his mistake. At the clinic, Lori let him walk her out to the car but wouldn’t talk to him. Instead, she rolled the window down and stared up at the row of palms in the median. At home, she lay on the couch, bloated, while he warmed up broth on the stove. He wished he could guide the embryo to its intended home, to safely implant and grow—but that, unlike the weather, was beyond his control.
When Lori fell asleep that night, he slipped away to the studio. Audrey had changed course. Contrary to his earlier predictions, she was now due to make landfall slightly east of where he’d anticipated, barely skirting Houston. This was good news: her eye would now cut through a less populated area. But his forecasts had focused on weakening the storm, not changing her course. What had he done to cause this recurvature? He racked his brain. Was it the westerly winds? The low-pressure system in the Southeast? Or another forecast he made days ago, for a completely different region? If he wanted to orchestrate the nation’s weather effectively, he desperately needed to grasp the multi-order effects of his interventions.
He wasn’t sure how many nights he’d spent at the studio, trying to understand how he’d diverted the hurricane, when Lori showed up at his cubicle. “This is unexpected,” he said, scrambling to cover his notes about Audrey. “How are you feeling?”
Lori placed a hand on her stomach. “I’m trying not to have any feelings this time,” she said. “I had a good feeling the other times and it never worked out.” She stared at his notes on the hurricane, still half visible under a stack of papers. “What’s going on with you?” she asked. “I get why you couldn’t make the appointments, but to miss the transfer?”
He wanted to share his secret, but he couldn’t tell her now, not while she was waiting for the embryo to implant. “It’s been really busy here,” he began.
“Work’s always busy,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s, like, the human condition. But you have to find time to show up for this shit.” The analyst in the next cubicle lifted his head; she lowered her voice. “Look, I went in for the blood test this morning.”
The weatherman glanced at his calendar. “I didn’t know that was today.”
“Because I didn’t tell you.” She took a deep breath. “My hCG levels indicate the embryo implanted.”
This wasn’t how he imagined finding out. He’d pictured Lori showing him a pregnancy test, the two of them popping open that bottle of sparkling cider in the fridge, like they had when he received news of his promotion, and brainstorming names. “So it actually worked?” he asked.
Lori nodded. “So far.”
In those months leading up to fatherhood, the weatherman installed a car seat in Lori’s SUV, researched pediatricians, and put together the crib, above which he hung a mobile of cumulus clouds, snowflakes, and rainbows. He also set up a makeshift weather center in the basement, in anticipation of days when he might have to work from home. The company offered parental leave, but with a child on the way, his work felt even more urgent. What a gift, to offer his daughter a more stable climate. He just needed a little more time.
The enormous complexity of unraveling the consequences of even a minor storm, however, left him defeated. Even the “Good Morning Show’s” sophisticated models had their limits. As an intermediary step, he wrote out long lists trying to establish clear priorities: should he even bother with hurricanes, or would tornadoes be easier? Would consistent, drought-ending rain in the Central Valley be fair to the animals who have adapted to the region’s cycle of wet and dry periods? And how should he define his area of responsibility? He was the nation’s weatherman, but the weather doesn’t respect borders.
The questions wouldn’t stop accumulating, not even after Ana was born that September.
The weatherman was home more often in those early months with his daughter, but whenever Lori had to feed her or she was asleep (usually on Lori, after eating), he retreated to his makeshift weather center in the basement to track storms and deliver the morning forecast in front of a green screen. It wasn’t the same as being in the studio, but it would have to work temporarily while they settled into their new life with Ana.
After a few months, Lori restarted coursework for her real estate license; and while she was in class, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the weatherman studied his models alongside Ana, who batted at the plush clouds and smiling sun that hung from her baby gym. He’d bottle-feed her and hush her to sleep to a soundtrack of the rumbling sky. He loved spending time with his daughter and wished he could spend every hour with her—but he was still frustratingly far from easing the burden of climate change and knew his true duties as a father laid elsewhere.
He was still frustratingly far from easing the burden of climate change and knew his true duties as a father laid elsewhere.
When Ana started daycare, the weatherman disappeared back to the studio. Meanwhile, Lori began to establish herself as the top realtor in San Angelo. Sellers and buyers alike were attracted to her friendly demeanor and no-nonsense approach. She would tell you exactly what made a house special, but didn’t try to oversell it. The local board of realtors named her a Rising Star and honored her at the annual awards banquet, which unfortunately coincided with a series of tornadoes in Oklahoma. The weatherman did not attend, nor did he attend the two parent observation days at Ana’s daycare, due to a flood in Missouri and, later, a blizzard in Rochester. The weather never took a break, so neither could the weatherman.
Lori’s professional success renewed her confidence, and after another long string of nights when the weatherman came home too late to tell Ana goodnight, she waited for him at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine. When he finally walked through that creaky front door he promised to replace, she’d nearly finished the bottle.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Another atmospheric river’s coming through,” he said, exhausted.
“That’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean.” She took a drink. “You need to take a serious look at those little storm systems moving through your head.”
The weatherman sat down at the table, opposite Lori. “You want me to see a therapist?” he asked.
“No. I mean, sure. I don’t know. It’s just, we don’t even watch TV together anymore,” she said. “Don’t you see how that’s bad?”
“Since when do you care about TV?”
“There it is again,” Lori said. “You’re completely missing the point. I can’t keep doing this.”
He loosened his tie. “My work is not what you think,” he blurted out. She could share the stress, if that’s what would keep them together. “I’d much rather be with you, but I can’t. You know that rain we got the night of the fire? That was me. I made that happen.”
Lori was confused. “What are you talking about?”
“The wildfire a few years ago. I put that out. That’s why I got the promotion. I can control the weather.” He knew he sounded deranged, but if anyone would understand, it was Lori. “What I mean is, what I predict actually happens.”
“Isn’t that true of every decent weatherman?”
“It’s different with me,” he said. “Haven’t you noticed how the Central Valley is steadily climbing out of a drought? That doesn’t just happen.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No, I intervened.”
“Intervened?” she asked, pouring herself the last of the wine. “Do you realize how absurd that sounds?”
“Yes.”
She swirled her glass of wine, considering her husband’s claim. “Fine. If you control the weather, make it snow.” She gazed through the window at the live oak in their backyard, illuminated by the full moon.
“Lori, it’s July.”
“So what?”
“Well, it doesn’t work like that. For starters, I have to be on TV.”
Lori laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Completely.”
“So make it snow tomorrow.”
“You have to consider the downstream consequences.”
“The snowball effects!” Lori said, clearly not taking the weatherman seriously.
He stormed back downstairs to his home weather center and studied his models, trying to see where there might be potential for snow. He found an opening, a strong cold front he could possibly nudge further south, and prepared a forecast for the next morning. But at the studio, he couldn’t bring himself to deliver it. Snow in San Angelo in July would only set him back further—and that wouldn’t be fair to the farmers in the Central Valley, or the folks in double-wides in tornado alley, or, longer term, to Ana. Couldn’t Lori understand that?
When she asked him to move out, the weatherman rented a condo in Pasadena, not far from the studio. He assumed the arrangement was temporary: his marriage wasn’t perfect, but it could withstand whatever this was. But a few weeks later, when he picked up Ana for the weekend, Lori told him she’d started seeing someone and encouraged him to do the same. He pressed for details—was this new man the reason she asked for the separation?—but she didn’t divulge much, only that his name was Cooper and he worked as a general contractor.
Hoping to cast a gloom over Lori’s new relationship, the weatherman forecasted inclement weather for San Angelo for Lori and Cooper’s weekends together, while Ana was safe with him in Pasadena. But despite the heatwaves and the high winds he summoned, the couple seemed unfazed, even happy. Months later, at pickup, Lori told him she and Cooper were going out of town and left him with the address of their hotel in the Malibu Hills, in case of emergency. He recognized the name of the hotel. The lead anchor of the “Good Morning Show” always talked about how much she loved its world-class spa. Why would Lori, who hated overpriced luxury hotels, want to spend her weekend there? Then it dawned on him: Cooper planned to propose.
He needed to give her what she’d asked for, proof that he wasn’t delusional, that he’d been distracted and absent for good reason.
In his afternoon forecast, he described an unusually cold winter storm system that would bring Arctic air much further south, into the Los Angeles Basin. “If we’re lucky, we may even see a small amount of snow at higher elevations, near the Santa Monica Mountains and in the Malibu Hills,” he stated. Los Angeles drivers, unprepared for snow, would be forced to pull over and wait out the storm, Lori and Cooper included. They’d arrive at the hotel exhausted and irritated, having missed dinner, in no mood for a romantic retreat, the storm a sign from the gods that their relationship wasn’t meant to be. Watching the snow out her hotel window, Lori would finally believe he was telling the truth.
When the weatherman determined the storm would hit much harder than he intended—a ripple effect he hadn’t accounted for, likely due to his interventions in the Pacific Northwest—he demanded that the network put him on air. It was too late to shift the system; all he could do was issue a warning. “We’re anticipating heavy snow, zero visibility for drivers. Microbursts flipping vehicles,” the weatherman told viewers. “Please, shelter in place until this storm passes, and stay off the roads.”
He tried calling Lori; no answer.
He left the station and sped down the highway to San Angelo, where Lori’s parents would be with Ana. He had no idea what he’d do once he was at the house, but he knew he needed to be with his daughter. Maybe they had Cooper’s number? Maybe Lori had checked in with them?
When he arrived, he knocked on the door, a new wooden door with an intricately carved live oak at its center, acorns lining the perimeter. No one answered. The neighbor across the street spotted him as she covered her dahlias with burlap. “Mr. Weatherman!” she called out, her hands up in protest, irritated with the cold air that had traveled all this way to ruin her garden. “What is this!”
“Have you seen Ana?” he asked, frantically.
“They all headed out,” she shouted back.
“Ana is supposed to be here with her grandparents.”
“Pretty sure they all left. Saw two cars leave the driveway.”
He sped back up the highway, into the Malibu Hills, directly into the storm. When he reached the long line of cars stalled in the canyon, he flung open his door and bolted up the road on foot, searching for Lori’s car. As he ran faster, snow crunching under his dress shoes, he recalled the night he met Lori, back in that Midwestern town he hated. Snow was falling in the parking lot of the movie theater. When he stepped out from under the awning to gauge whether the flakes were fluffy or wet, a snowball thudded into his chest. Lori rushed up to him, laughing, and explained that she had mistaken him for someone else. He couldn’t remember what movie he’d seen that night, or the density of the snow, only Lori, her mittened hand offering him a snowball. “Take your best shot,” she said.
Traffic began moving ahead steadily.
The weatherman was still running when the “Good Morning Show’s” news van slowed alongside him. “What are you doing out here?” the producer asked, sliding open the door to let the weatherman in.
“What’s the latest on the storm?” he asked, still running. “Any fatalities?”
There was only an inch or two of snow on the road.
The producer shot his cameraman a look. “Nothing like that,” he said. “Just some stalled traffic, maybe a few ruined interiors for those sad fools in convertibles.”
The weatherman stopped, relieved Lori and Ana were safe, but also in shock, knowing how close he’d come to ushering in a more severe, life-threatening storm. When he caught his breath, he pleaded with the producer to put him on air. “Please,” he said. “It’s a matter of public safety.”
The producer didn’t need to be convinced. Reporting from the field always boosted ratings. The crew positioned the weatherman on the side of the road, where the wind had blown the snow into ankle-high mounds. Behind him, the hills were dusted white. The producer signaled for the cameraman to start rolling.
The weatherman looked directly in the camera and disclosed to the “Good Morning Show’s” viewers what had transpired during his tenure as the nation’s weatherman. He described his nascent ability to guide the weather, starting with the wildfire in San Angelo, and promised that he’d tried his best to bring pleasant conditions to all Americans, noting the consistent rain in the Central Valley, but admitted that in the end he found the task insurmountable.
Of course, nobody would believe him. They probably thought he was some Hollywood megalomaniac, driven mad by a small taste of celebrity.
All I wanted was to bring certainty into our lives, he continued. But the weather refuses to be controlled. It’s unpredictable, always changing. At least since the Babylonians, we’ve looked up at the clouds to see what will happen tomorrow—that’s thousands of years of practice, and we still get it wrong.
The producer signaled for him to wrap it up.
I used to believe a forecast was a glimpse into the future, but it’s nothing more than an accumulation of guesses designed to impose order on chaos, the illusion of control.
The weatherman leaned over and grabbed a handful of snow. He paused and stared into the camera, trying to find his reflection in the lens.
The producer dragged a finger across his throat.
Reporting live from the Malibu Hills, he concluded, this is your weatherman, saying farewell. He tossed the snowball at the camera, and it exploded onto Lori’s television screen.
