Seeds of Weather Sit on a hillside overlooking the sea on a warm summer's day, relax in the golden heat of the afternoon, pluck the head from a dandelion and blow away the seeds-watch them scatter in the wind and you will have become part of the weather. As the tiny seeds fly through the air at your behest, the microturbulence you have created will meet updrafts of warm air from the field and little eddies of wind will spiral upwards into the sky above. More air will be drawn into the void left behind by the rising air, creating a gentle wind that plays on your face, the beginnings of a shore breeze. Meanwhile, far above you, some of the tiny particles of pollen from the seeds will continue to ascend, reaching so high into the air that they find themselves in a region of icy cold. Here they may form a "seed" of another kind -- the heart of an ice crystal -- as even tinier molecules of water cluster around them and hold fast. In turn these microscopic structures of ice will play in the up- and downdrafts in the weird world at the top of what is now a spreading thundercloud, growing to become pellets of hail or falling and inexorably melting out as rain that eventually drenches the grass around you. Instead, as the cloud spreads out in the familiar anvil shape of a summer storm, some of the crystals and their passengers of pollen may be carried far across the globe by the superfast winds of the jet stream, eventually perhaps sprinkling down as snow on the cap of a distant mountain and there melting, to become torrent that cuts its way down a river gorge, across a parched flood-plain and out towards the sea. And the water that then flows from this estuary on the far side of the world may in turn undergo an epic journey through the depths of the ocean, to return perhaps five hundred or a thousand years later to the very spot where you are sitting. It may drift in once again as a cloud, to rain on the ground and to be drawn up by the roots of the ten-thousandth generation of the dandelion plant that you held in your hands. For the weather is something that is in us and all around us, a huge interconnected force of chaos: a force of creation and destruction, a thin veil that shrouds our planet and allows us to live and thrive. Excerpted from The Weather by John Lynch All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
