Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [132]
“Hmmm,” Drepung said. “No, I don’t know what his situation is.”
Out at the dining room table Drepung said to Frank, “I know you are from San Diego, and I don’t suppose you have family in this area. I was wondering if, while you are convalescing, you would move in with us at the embassy house.”
“But you have all those refugees from the island.”
“Yes, well, but we have an extra bed in Rudra Cakrin’s room, you see. No one wants to take it. And he is studying English now, as you know, so. . . .”
“I thought he had a tutor.”
“Yes, but now he needs a new one.”
Frank cracked a little smile. “Fired another one, eh?”
“Yes, he is not a good student. But with you it will be different. And you once told me you had an interest in learning Tibetan, remember? So you could teach each other. It would help us. We can use help right now.”
“Thanks. That’s very kind of you.” Frank looked down, nodded without expression. It seemed to Charlie that the concussion was still having its way with him. And no doubt a monster headache. Drepung went to the kitchen to boil water for tea. “Not Tibetan tea, I promise! But a good herb tea for headache.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “Thanks. Although I don’t really have a headache. I’m not sure why. I can’t feel my nose at all.”
The weather got worse. The new year’s January saw:
High temperature in London for the week of Jan. 10, -26° F. In Lisbon, a 60 degree drop in 7 minutes. Snow in San Diego, snow in Miami. New York Harbor froze over, trucks drove across. Reunion Island: 235 inches of rain in ten days. In Montana, temp dropped 100° F in 24 hours, to -56° F. In South Dakota the temperature rose 60 degrees in 2 minutes. On Hawaii’s big island, 12 inches rain in an hour. In Buffalo, New York, 30 foot snowdrifts, all from snow blown in from frozen Lake Erie, on 60 mph winds. Reindeer walked over fences from the zoo and went feral. On the Olympic peninsula in Washington, a single downdraft knocked over forest trees estimated at 8 million board feet of lumber.
In a North Sea storm similar to that of 1953, Holland suffered four hundred dead and flooding up to 27 miles inland.
February was worse. That February saw:
A storm in New England with 92 mph winds. Waterloo, Iowa, had 16 days straight below 0° F. 7 inches snow in San Francisco. Great Lakes totally frozen over. Snow in L.A. stopped traffic. Ice in New Orleans blocked the Mississippi River. -66° F in Montana. 100 mph winds in Sydney, Australia. Feb. 4, 180 tornadoes reported, 1,200 killed; named the “Enigma Outbreak.”
A low-pressure system experiencing extremely rapid intensification of the kind called “bombogenesis” brought 77 inches of snow in one day, Maine. Storm surge was 12 foot high. Reunion Island, 73 inches rain in 24 hours. Winds 113 mph in Utah. Rhine floods caused 60 billion dollars damage. An Alberta hailstorm killed 36,000 ducks.
A thunderstorm complex with winds of hurricane force, called a derecho, struck Paris and surrounding region, $20 billion in damages. 150 mph wind storm in Oslo. Two Bengal tigers escaped a Madison, Wisconsin, zoo in a tornado. Thousands of fish fell in a storm on Yarmouth, England.
165 mph winds make a category 5 storm; there had been three in U.S. history; two struck Europe that February, in Scotland and Portugal.
At that point they were only halfway through February. Soon it would be Washington’s turn.
During 1815’s “year without summer,” after the Tambora volcano exploded, temperatures worldwide lowered by 37° F average.
AS SOON AS HE FELT HE could make an adequate display of normality to the Quiblers, Frank thanked them for their hospitality and excused himself. They regarded him oddly, he thought, and he had to admit it was a bit of a stretch to claim nothing was wrong. Actually he felt quite bizarre.
But he didn’t want to tell them that. And he didn’t want to tell them that he had no place to go. So he stood in their doorway insisting he was fine. He could see Anna