Evil meltemi madness

I’m down on the Florida coast now, staying with family. The weather is beautiful, the dissertation is happening, and relaxation is simultaneously in full effect.

Blog writing spot.

Yes, unbelievers, that IS the sunrise. Which I have gotten up to see three times this week.

Unfortunately, my lovely peace of mind is beginning to fray as I’ve become increasingly more twitchy. And let me tell you why.

It’s the damn wind. When I first got here, the trees were still and the water was flat. Then a steady wind picked up on Monday and it hasn’t stopped since. Granted, it’s only about 15-20 miles per hour from the east, which is really no big whoop. The problem is that it’s incessant, all day and all night, with no lull. Wind in palm fronds may be one of my all time favorite sounds, but even that is starting to grate on my ears.

It’s like the meltemi, that summer wind in the Mediterranean that comes barreling through and drives the sea into a froth too dangerous to sail. Ferries stay docked and tourists complain; people sit idle and impatient; but mostly the wind just continues and doesn’t cease. I keep reading on the internet that people love the meltemi because it cools things down, but that’s not what I remember hearing in the Greek islands. Instead, there was a mixed and strained relationship with the wind - it could be soothing on occasion, but it was also infernal because it just NEVER ENDED. The constant sound of it, the constant feel of it, the constant frustration of having to right things that had been knocked over, the race to catch items before they blew away, the need to always raise your voice. I particularly remember the relentless snapping and tangling of my hair, sticking in my eyes and the corner of my mouth and twisting in my face. Eventually you just had to give up and sit in silence with your eyes shut tight, letting the wind coil around you and do its worst.

Googled painting of the meltemi by Caroline Huff.

It’s just those sorts of moments when the rumors of meltemi madness make complete sense. I don’t know if those rumors are true, of course, but I often heard about how the meltemi could make people completely lose it. People would just …snap. It may sound ridiculous, but there’s something intensely disturbing and uncanny about that hot endless wind, and the frustration it causes can just build and build until you’re ready to have a nervous breakdown. It actually feels like bad luck slithering across your skin. Even familial violence and murder were ascribed to that evil wind and I tell you, the sinister madness caused by the meltemi seemed completely understandable.

Anyways, I’m feeling a bit meltemi crazy at the moment, like I need to go run 10 miles or chop down a tree or something. I just want it to STOP, to be silent, to be still.

This is the moment when I’ll do the smart and sane thing. I’ll close the windows and go inside. And put in ear plugs.

Sand Storms: The Revenge of Tatooine

I am still trying to figure out why I am not entirely healthy yet, ten days into my cold. Up to now, I've been blaming it on the lymph node infection I've had, assuming that a common cold will be much more devastating if infection is involved.

My friend Stavroula (OSU represent!) has indicated that it might be something else. Now, it's no secret that Athens is grossly polluted and breathing the air can be bad for you. But apparently, we've got more to worry about than just the Athenian air...the Evil Dust Cloud of Death coming in from the Sahara.

Dust cloud approaching Italy from Africa in 2005.



Dust cloud blankets Cyrpus in 2008.

Apparently the dust clouds rolling in off the Sahara reach Athens several times a year. It seems, in fact, that these dust clouds have quite an atmospheric impact, reducing rain and maybe even cutting down on the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic. Unfortunately, it seems that the dust clouds also carry pollution. For example, in 2000, a Saharan dust cloud brought radioative rain to Thessaloniki...radioactive as in straight-from-Chernobyl-style-radioactive.

I haven't heard anything in the news about a dust cloud in Athens, but according to another OSU representative, Dimitris, one of these very dust clouds is now in Crete, where the air is thick and opaque. I assume that this outbreak is a result of a dust cloud documented on March 1st down in Chad, which has since grown in size and moved our unfortunate direction.

Dust cloud in the Sahara, March 1st.

Huge dust cloud swirls over the Mediterranean yesterday, March 6th.

I was appalled to look out my window yesterday and see that Athens looked like this:

Athens in a Saharan dust cloud, April 2008.

So maybe this is the reason that I can't stop blowing my nose, and my head feels like a cotton plantation, and I can't hear anything out of one ear. I can blame the desert for all my woes.