This weather is sick. That's what the record store employee said to us 15 years ago as the sky turned a summer pre-tornado green (and I could not stop laughing).

By "sick" he meant "intense" or "crazy." He used the word the way the kids today use "wicked"--good or bad, only thinking made it so. Now years later, again the weather is sick.

A row of low dirty clouds are rolling across the skyline, faster than you or I could ever run. When I look again it's here, the storm, and tiny figures many stories below are moving faster on the wet pavement. One is putting up a red umbrella. Another is making a mad dash for the curb.

On the river, passengers on a tour boat have formed an amorphous, struggling mass at one corner of the top deck. They are bottlenecked at the stairs, trying to get below decks. Are they polite or is brute force leading the day? From this height all those moral bearings vanish and they are no more than ants on an anthill. By the time they all get downstairs, the boat has already reached the dock.

Up here, it's raining harder now, with the wind creating wet gusts, almost very thin watery clouds. The weather is sick, but at least it's egalitarian. The boats keep moving, the bus bears down with shining headlights. Far away, a tiny figure runs to catch it.