Facing the Storm

Living, as I do, far from the barometric pressures of life in the hurricane belt, it's easy to think of the maritime meteorologist as the eyes and ears of the storm. Clearly, this is absurd. Adding facial features where there are none is one thing, but stacking one eye on top of another is like adding an ear to an ear, unless it's corn we're talking about. But it isn't. It's a storm.

When meteorologists talk about the eye of the storm, they always mean the good eye. No one ever talks about being in the bad eye of the storm because no one has lived to talk about it. Communication is hard enough when you're alive, so you can imagine the difficulty if you're not. This is why many storms rely on the third eye for communication, leaving meteorologists to guess at timing and trajectory.

Another thing you won't hear from meteorologists is how dangerous it is to be in the ear of the storm. This has nothing to do with the shortage of seafaring swabs, and everything to do with GPS failure when the signal is obstructed. As any properly seasoned sealubber will tell you, dead reckoning is alive and well, but the ear of the storm is never more than 30 decibels south of its bad eye, which is always infected on account of the mote.