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PORTLAND, Maine – What looked Tuesday morning to be a milquetoast weather system over the Great Lakes shoved off for the East Coast later in the day and began acquiring energy and moisture.

For a while the radar looked showery, but the rain was forecast to become steadier and the wind to pick up. By late afternoon rain was under way across much of New England, but there was little wind offshore.

What wind there was was out of the southeast. We used to say, “Rain before the wind, storm won’t begin,” when southeast was in the forecast. And we set great store in the conventional wisdom that a southeaster was good for nine hours, no more. Indeed, these were articles of absolute faith when I fished.

Under the circumstances, then, I may be forgiven for wondering if the forecast for this week, which calls for three or more days of rain and wind, is overly enthusiastic.

It is my observation that people who make their living in warm, dry places that don’t shake, roll or pound when it’s windy love to hyperbolize about the weather. Mariners, pilots, mountain climbers and others for whom weather can have real, sometimes life-threatening impacts, are much less likely be sustained by admonitions to stock up on batteries.

As it happens, the weatherman took himself out from under the strictures that apply to southeasterlies by calling for the wind to back into the east and then the northeast, at 30 knots, with gusts to 45. It is supposed to blow onshore through Thursday and then back into the north and northwest throughout Friday.

Even if it’s wrong, this forecast makes sense. In the northern hemisphere, if you put your back to the wind and extend your left arm you’ll be pointing toward the low. Over time, the storm goes by. There’s a poem, most of which I can’t recall, that tries to explain this concept by mean of a storm-tossed mariner with his back to the mast. “And the wind blew up his ass,” goes the last line, which everyone remembers.

There are few verities about weather, but that’s one of them. So is the rather more general, “All weather is a result of uneven heating of the Earth’s surface.”

If there are any others, I don’t know them. If you do, feel free to send them along.

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