The weekend I spent getting punished by global warming.

Last weekend I took a trip out of town by plane. This is only the second time I’ve traveled by air since before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. My nephew, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, was graduating from high school (with honors) so of course I intended to be there. He did graduate, and we’re all proud of him, and it was great to see family. All that was fine. But the rest of the trip – virtually all of it – was overshadowed and disrupted by a powerful and ominous factor that no one I encountered during my weekend voyages was even willing to name out loud: the climate crisis. Indeed, nearly everything that happened to me on the graduation trip, even the graduation itself, had something to do with global warming. It was a stark example to me of the pervasiveness which this insidious enemy now has in our lives and public events, and which will continue to have, and increase, in years to come. The fact that very few people are talking about it by name is frankly outrageous. Here is my story, and my thoughts, for what they’re worth.

I live in the Portland, Oregon area. The plan was for my husband and I to fly to Omaha on Southwest Airlines, with a connecting flight through Chicago. Our flight was supposed to leave so early Friday morning that we got a hotel room near the airport Thursday night. Late May is the high season for severe weather in the Midwest – that means thunderstorms and tornadoes – and in fact there were such storms in the Omaha area that Thursday night. When we departed Portland early on Friday morning we heard there might be further storms in the Chicago area that could affect our flight. They certainly did. Not only did we encounter severe turbulence, which punished and buffeted our fragile little 737 ferociously, but the storms caused an incident at the Chicago airport that closed it down before we landed. Our plane was diverted at the last minute to St. Louis. After a rough landing we touched down there.