Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Please be more Pacific

There are two terms of Spanish origin that fill our conversation today.

One of them, of course, is "El Chapo," the Mexican drug kingpin who is back in custody now because the law down south of the border (just below the Trump Wall) tracked him to an American movie star.  This brings up the question...if El Chapo is in the calaboose, is there an election held to crown someone else as King Pin, or does the position go to one of his relatives, maybe? Suppose he has a shifty brother-in-law who has been hanging around the fringes of the family business for years, hoping for a chance to take over?  

I hope they make a movie about all this and that Wilmer Valderrama will play the brother-in-law.  

And, of course, the other term is "El Niño," for the weather phenomena that result from periodic fluctuations in temperature between the ocean waters and the atmosphere around the Equator near the Pacific Ocean. 

El Niño, as a weather phase, has been talked about since the 1600s.  And to date, no one has done anything about it!  The very term means "little boy" or "the Christ child" in Spanish, and was first used by fishermen off South America because it seemed to begin around the end of December...just like Christmas!

The warm Pacific water interacts with the air, and the next thing you know, there is a lot of rain across the nation as the air moves west to east, and this is good. It might put a dent in that California drought, and in the fender of that Hyundai that a Toyota skidded into on an icy midwest highway.

I bring this up because, as I write, the meteorologists are calling for a wintry mix, possibly involving a light dusting of snow, for later today.  In Baltimore, this will be preceded by thousands of people running to the BuySumMor, stocking up on bread, milk and toilet paper, as if they will not see the outside world again for months on end.

Blame it on either El Chapo or El Niño! 

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