Storm

by George R. Stewart

The swamper rolled up the tarpaulin at the back. The headlights of the rotary glared into the truck. The swamper took a good look. “Skis gone,” he said. Then he looked at his watch—just after midnight.

  “One man or two in these outfits?” asked the operator; he really knew, but he spoke to be saying something.

  “One, along the highway,” said the swamper, “two, when the wires are farther away.”

  They stood a moment staring at each other. Around their ankles the snow was moving; the force of the wind held it tight along the surface; it drifted heavily, like dry sand creeping on a dune.

  Facing toward the forest on the side where the telephone-lines ran, the operator let out a mighty “Hal-loo!”

  They waited, and in the hush of expectancy could hear the engine of the rotary throbbing steadily. A faint call came back from the forest. “Hear that?” cried the swamper, starting forward impulsively.

  But the operator called again: “Hal-loo-oo, hal-loo-oo!”

  “Loo-oo,” came back.

  “Echo,” said the operator. “Hardly think there would be one in this wind.”

  While the swamper replaced the shear-bolts, the operator got into touch with the Station by radio, and talked with the night-foreman.

  “I guess that’s the fellow the telephone people were calling up about,” said the night-foreman. “He hadn’t reported in for quite a while. I’ll call them.”

  “Do you want us to go look for him?”

  “You can’t without skis, and anyway if he’s been in there that long—”

  4

  During the course of the storm more and more water leaked through the bullet-hole into the switch-box at Underpass 342-2. The wires and insulation became wet. At 1:12 A.M. the white flash of a short-circuit lighted the interior of the box; a fuse blew out; the pumps stopped.

  Rain was falling heavily, and draining from the long slopes of the underpass into the sump. The two lanes of the underpass were separated by a concrete wall, and all the water drained into the northbound lane, whence it was pumped out. The northbound lane was therefore much more quickly affected.

  Because of the storm and the lateness of the hour, only eight cars were approaching the underpass from the south within a distance which would involve them. They were, in order:

  1) A pick-up truck.

  2) A small sedan.

  3) A coupé containing three college youths.

  4) Another coupé containing Miss Miller, a schoolteacher. She was unused to driving in the rain or to being out alone on the highway so late at night; she was in what is known as “a mild state of nerves.”

  5) A jalopy containing a migrant worker, his wife, and their two children. The children were asleep in the back, on top of a clutter of household goods.

  6) A car of the Highway Patrol containing Sergeant Daly and Officer O’Regan.

  7) A truck-and-trailer laden with crates of carrots.

  8) A large sedan containing a uniformed chauffeur, Mr. Andrew F. Magnusson (the mining magnate, no less), Mrs. Magnusson, and their twin daughters Deborah (Debby) and May (Mebby). They were returning from a formal dinner, and were dressed accordingly. Mr. Magnusson was asleep; Mrs. Magnusson was having digestive troubles; the girls were bored.

  The patrol-car was going slowly; its presence and example stabilized the traffic. Drivers who passed it slowed down. The cars were therefore to arrive at the underpass with only a few changes in position.

  •

  The pick-up truck dipped into the underpass. Coming around the curve, the driver saw a sheet of water upon the pavement. He threw on his brake, and managed to check his car a little. The water sprayed out on both sides, but he was through almost before he knew what was happening. “Not more than three or four inches,” he said to himself.

  The water, rising rapidly, was six inches deep by the time the small sedan came along. It hit the water hard and skidded round a little, but the driver skillfully shifted into second and went through.

  The college youth who was driving the coupé gave out a whoop when he saw the water, and stepped on the gas. The car slewed to the right, and water flew in all directions. “Yip-pee!” they all three yelled. Then, without even a cough, the engine died. The driver whirled it with the starter for a little, and then remembered that this particular model was likely to stall in high water. They all did a little perfunctory cursing, and then lighted cigarettes. Their momentum had almost carried them through the flooded part. They discussed making a jump for it, but decided they would have more fun just sitting and seeing what happened.

  The next thing that happened was Miss Miller and her mild state of nerves. When she saw water ahead and then a stalled car, she flipped her steering-wheel much too suddenly to the left and stepped hard on the throttle pedal instead of dropping into second. Her back wheels spun and skidded, the car went half-way round; in confusion she threw on the brake before releasing the clutch, and killed her engine. Underpasses were terrifying to her at best; now she looked out, saw the good-natured grins of the college youths, and misinterpreted them as lascivious gloatings. Her confusions becoming panic, she snapped her ignition-switch, and tried madly to start her engine. It did not respond; having first killed the engine, she had turned the ignition off, not on, by snapping the switch; but this was a mistake to which she was prone even in her less excited moments. With a sideways glance at the grinning youths she abandoned herself to kidnaping, murder, and worse.

  The truck-driver was skillful, but even a professional cannot do much when he rounds a curve into eight inches of water and sees two cars at crazy angles blocking three-quarters of the passageway. At best a high-loaded truck with an equally high-loaded trailer is not a handy combination to maneuver. The driver did all he could; he dodged Miss Miller’s car. But his outfit jack-knifed on him, and the trailer almost tipped over. All that saved it was the spilling off of some dozen crates of carrots. The truck-driver’s cursing was not perfunctory.

  But just as he was getting warmed up, the Magnussons arrived in their big sedan. The curve of the underpass was now so completely filled that the chauffeur saw the trailer in time to stop the car without hitting anything. Mrs. Magnusson and the twins squealed, and Mr. Magnusson came out of his sleep with a jump. The chauffeur sized up the situation quickly; he was just about to back out of the water when the jalopy arrived behind him.

  The jalopy had only dim lights, and scarcely any brakes. The water, however, checked it a little, and it hit the rear of the big sedan with only a moderate bump. The Magnusson females squealed again; the migrant’s two children awoke and bawled; the migrant mingled some barnyard epithets with the truck-driver’s South-of-Market profanity.

  Just at that moment a freight-train started to go over the rails above.

  Jammed in an underpass, surrounded by water, with cars front and rear and a freight-train overhead—all this was too much for Mrs. Magnusson’s well-established claustrophobia. With a determined “Gotta get out of here!” she reached for the door-handle. Mr. Magnusson made a gesture to stop her and then (knowing his wife) gave it up. Ermine cloak, gold snood, and diamonds—Mrs. Magnusson stepped out into the muddy water. The twins, no longer bored, followed her with delighted yaps; it was the greatest lark.

  “Go after her,” ordered Mr. Magnusson to the chauffeur. “See they don’t get into trouble.”

  As with a homing instinct, Mrs. Magnusson continued northward, although this direction brought her into deeper water. Followed by the chauffeur, she plodded on through the floating carrots, passed around Miss Miller’s car, and reached the farther shore where she stood, magnificently draggled, and called back for her young.

  But the college youths had sighted the girls, and piled out of their coupé to be of assistance. Mebby (having the time of her life) threw a carrot at the boys; then both twins, hoisting their long dinner gowns well above four very attractive identical kne
es, dodged around the truck.

  Just then the two officers arrived in the patrol-car.

  They stopped successfully, and surveyed the scene within the glare of their lights.

  “Kee-riced!” said Officer O’Regan. Then he stepped out manfully into the water, well-shined puttees and all. He disliked accidents, especially gathering up fragments of people, and he was much relieved to find that nobody was hurt. On his way back, Debby got him under the chin with a well-hurled carrot. She was unbelievable enough to look at, and when he looked around he saw another one of the same. He relieved himself by bawling out the truck-driver, and asking him if he didn’t know better than to go jack-knifing his outfit in an underpass.

  In the meantime Sergeant Daly had set a flare back on the highway to halt other drivers. Also the migrant had managed to back his jalopy out of the water.

  Officer O’Regan reported to the Sergeant that nobody was hurt. The Sergeant then went back down the highway in the car to the nearest telephone to call headquarters and the highway-station and a tow-car. Officer O’Regan went sloshing back into the mess, wishing he were a sergeant.

  He found Mr. Magnusson comfortably puffing a cigar. “I can’t drive,” said Mr. Magnusson. “Somewhere around here you’ll find a chauffeur and three crazy women. They all belong to me.” Officer O’Regan climbed in, and backed the car out.

  Since everybody assumed that Miss Miller’s car was stalled on account of the water, there was nothing more to be done at present. At this point the twins felt that the water was getting definitely cold, and so did the college youths; one of them remembered about having a full pint in the coupé. The truck-driver could not accomplish anything until the car in front of him was moved, and so they invited him along. The appearance of the policeman had reassured Miss Miller; she thawed out and invited the twins into her car. Everybody, including Miss Miller, had a drink, and began to feel warm and chummy.

  “I wish we could get out of here before the tow-car comes,” said one of the youths. “Those guys sure soak you.”

  “Why don’t you try to start your car again, lady?” said the truck-driver.

  “Surely,” said Miss Miller. And since this time she looked to be certain that the ignition was on, the engine started perfectly. Miss Miller drove right out of the water.

  Someone got a tow-rope, and Miss Miller pulled the other coupé out of the underpass and parked it. Then she said good-bye and drove on. The boys knew they could get their engine going, once they were out of the standing water.

  With the coupés out of the way the truck-driver managed to get straightened out and going again.

  Shortly afterwards the Sergeant got back. He walked over the railroad tracks to the other end of the southbound lane. He flagged at that end, and Officer O’Regan at the other, and in that way they moved two-way traffic through the upper side of the underpass. Even yet the water in it was not above six inches deep, and a driver who was forewarned and going slowly would have no trouble.

  The tow-car got there next. Officer O’Regan told the garage-men that there was a whole mess of cars in the underpass, but when the garage-men drove in there, all they could see was a lot of carrots floating around in the water. They said some things about a dumb cop, and then backed out and told him so.

  “Kee-riced!” said Officer O’Regan.

  The highway gang got there next, and just behind their truck a fire-engine to pump the underpass. But before the fire-engine could get started, one of the highway gang located the trouble in the switch-box. He pulled the switch, dried things out a bit, plugged the bullet-hole with a wad of paper, put in a spare fuse, and threw the switch back in. The pumps started with a whir. The highway gang collected the carrots, so that they would not plug the drains.

  An hour after it all began, the drivers who were going through the underpass did not know that anything had been happening.

  5

  At ten minutes after four, through the workings of a well-adjusted sub-conscious mind, the District Traffic Superintendent woke up. Automatically he reached for the telephone on the head of the bed, and talked with the office.

  “She’s not so good,” said his assistant. “Up on the Hump, I mean—the Central.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Oh, just a line here and a line there—too much soft snow, I guess.”

  “Isn’t Plant fixing them up for you?”

  “Oh, yes. We keep getting them back, but we’re losing them faster than we get them back. They’re just sending in another crew from Sacramento, and a Modesto crew is going north to back up at Sacramento. We’re all right now—hardly any calls to go through. But we’ll have to start delaying calls when the nine o’clock rush comes, if things don’t get better.”

  “No big breaks?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, I don’t like it. Just a moment while I figure it out. . . . All right. Get me Chicago, will you, please?”

  A minute later he was talking with the Chicago office, which co-ordinated the telephone routings of the continent. He explained his needs briefly, and asked that some of the lines from San Francisco to the East be connected via Los Angeles so as to relieve the hard-pressed Central Transcontinental. Chicago agreed, and the DTS again made himself comfortable beneath the blankets.

  •

  Even before he could settle fully into slumber, Chicago had talked with Los Angeles and Denver. But Denver demurred. A new storm was reported over Utah, moving easterly into Colorado. Because of this threat, Denver was nervous, and was loath to assume any additional load. Chicago granted the difficulty. Chicago then talked elsewhere, here and there, over the continent.

  As the result of these far-flung conversations, certain switches were flipped. The operators in San Francisco were ignorant of these changes; every girl still continued to see before her, for example, ten jacks beneath the name NEW YORK. For six of the jacks the voice-channels still followed the route over Donner Pass and through Salt Lake City and Denver. For the other four the voice-channels passed by way of Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, and St. Louis.

  The DTS, knowing that he had prepared as well as possible against the power of the storm, sank deeper into sleep.

  6

  The great mass of polar air centering over the valley of the Yukon was discharging itself in two far-reaching rivers of wind. In their life-histories these two great wind-torrents may be compared to identical twins parted soon after birth and reared in different environments. The first, which passed over the land, altered but slowly; it remained cold and dry, and penetrated far toward the tropics as a frigid blast. But the second, which passed over the water, became rapidly moist and temperate.

  This second polar discharge, as one of its functions in the current scheme of weather, fed new supplies of moisture into the storm which was still centered off the coast of Oregon. The process was grandiose. The cold and dry air was blowing as a northeast wind when it descended from the mountains. A little south of the Alaskan coast, it came definitely within the orbit of the storm, and thereafter followed around a roughly semi-circular course from two to three thousand miles in circuit depending upon the distance from the center. During the long transit the wind shifted from north to northwest, to west, to southwest; finally, as it approached the California coast, the current of air was moving directly from the south.

  Nearing the coast this now temperate and moist air was forced upward, partly by overrunning colder, heavier air near the coast, partly by ascending the barrier of the mountains. Rising, it was cooled and discharged its moisture. The raindrops and snowflakes falling upon California could therefore in the main be traced back to a great arc of northerly ocean-surface beginning in the Gulf of Alaska.

  •

  Even before this polar air had begun to pour out from the Arctic, a mass of tropical air had been lying quiescent between Hawaii and the North American coast. During the
days of the polar outbreak this tropical air continued on the whole intact and unchanged. The unusual atmospheric activities to the northward had jostled it to the south, but had not sucked it in toward the storm-center. It remained warm and saturated with moisture—the atmospheric opposite of the polar air.

  If these bodies of polar and tropical air had been brought suddenly into contact, the resulting weather disturbance would have been catastrophic, beyond the experience or even the imagination of men. Any such unprecedented, world-shaking disaster, however, was rendered impossible by the intervening temperate zone, three thousand miles in width. What actually happened was that the polar air which reached southward across the Pacific became temperate, and only then, as it began to turn eastward toward the coast, came into contact with the tropical air. The contrast between the two was still sufficient to produce thunderstorms and heavy rain-squalls. But the easterly-moving current just grazed the more southerly air-mass, and during the first days of storm only a negligible amount of tropical air was carried along to expend its rain on the coast.

  During one of the earlier days, however, a divergent tongue of northern air actually thrust itself some few hundred miles southward into the tropical area. This advance was accompanied by the usual thunderstorms and torrential showers which may be expected when cold air thus protrudes itself beneath warmer, moist air. The advance, if long continued, would perhaps have resulted in the formation of a wholly new storm center. But the complex of air-currents around the whole world shifted slightly at that time so that the main stream of the polar outbreak continued its easterly course, leaving the intrusion of northern air within the tropical air.

  For a day or two thunder continued to grumble and rainstorms to form and dissipate. But in the absence of any general wind-current to force them one against the other the northern and the southern air accommodated their differences. Lying over the surface of the tropical ocean the northern air rapidly became so warm and moist in its lower levels as to be indistinguishable from its neighbor. Higher up, however, a cloud deck still remained to mark the boundary between the still frigid upper levels of the northern air, and the much warmer tropical air of the same altitude.