Wild Weather

Dream

I’m watching a newscast. The first part I can remember is a weather story with a team of storm chasers in the field. They're tracking some phenomenon and broadcasting live, but it hasn’t shown up yet so they switch over to another story. Some footage about a revolution in Eastern Europe starts. It shows a crowd gathered in a public square and there is a bunch of people standing on top of a bus holding a banner written in a language I don’t understand. The news mentions that they overthrew the tyrannical government and received aid from some of the neighboring democratic countries. I think to myself that revolutions like this have been happening a lot lately and that maybe this is a result of our global technology level. Something like how the ease of communication is making democracy the natural form of government. They switch back to the storm chasers because the strange weather system has finally arrived. The storm chasers are in a kind of tricked out van and are parked in a residential neighborhood looking at some shale bluffs. There is some excited talk as they say the phenomenon is coming over the hill and the camera shows a small but very intense cyclone moving down the bluff. The commentary states that this sort of thing has only ever been seen in the upper atmosphere before. The cyclone moves into the back yard of a house and picks up a child’s toy. Now a big pink and yellow cloth flower thing is spinning in the center, giving the storm a more defined shape (and also making it look kind of silly). Readings from the various instruments on the van are being rattled off, with wind speeds of a couple hundred miles an hour and a temperature of 5000° F in the core. This temperature sounds ridiculous and one of the storm chasers says that they are “checking the physics” on that temperature. The cyclone continues to move around the van, and they come back to say that a temperature of 5000° isn’t physically possible and the measurement must be a bad reading. Next it shows a mailman standing in shocked surprise as the cyclone moves within about 20 feet of him. As the storm moves past the side of his body facing it is terribly burned. He collapses to the ground with singed clothes and all the hair on one side of his face is burnt away and blister instantly appear (this is my brain telling me it’s a third degree burn). I’m shocked and the guys in the van talk about how the temperature reading is apparently correct. The camera only stays on the mailman for a moment before continuing to follow the storm. I start getting mad that nobody helps the mailman because he was sort of reaching towards the van as the camera pulled away. The new people comment that he's getting up and walking away and I feel a little better knowing that he can walk but still think that maybe they should have tried to help him rather than just continue to watch the weather, no matter how scientifically important it is. Then a doorbell starts ringing, because it’s actually 2:30 and I’m taking a nap and they guy is here to put salt in the water softener.

Analysis

This is one of my dreams that exists somewhere between lucid dreaming and hallucination. It happened after I had woken up from sleeping and stayed lying in bed. I was still drowsy and let my thoughts and imaginations ramp up into a full dream-like state while I was still semi-conscious. These dreams are usually third person and my thoughts and emotions will influence the action in uncertain ways. An example is how in this dream, when I got mad that they didn’t help the mailman they talk about him walking away instead of actually doing what I wanted and helping him.

The fact that I’m watching the news in this dream is a little odd since I don’t watch the news (not having cable makes it hard). I do get little highlights whenever I hear people mention missing airplanes and what not, but I never really follow these up. This explains my thoughts about recent revolutions since those are something that I often hear about. so from my perspective it seems like they're happening all the time. I assume that there haven’t been any more revolutions that normal recently, but my thoughts about increased communications encouraging the creation of democracies is a real thing.

Weather reports are something I definitely don’t watch since I believe that looking out the window is all the weather information I typically need. It’s not like I change how I dress depending on the forecast or anything. If anything real crazy is on the way I usually hear about it through the grapevine anyway. That’s how I learned about our blizzard last week, which is probably what got me thinking about intense weather phenomena.

It's also apparent that I support decent ethics in the face of scientific discovery, so that's cool.

Auguries

If you see a giant spinning flower coming at you, RUN. It could melt your face.