On weather

A couple nights ago there was a cricket or a peeper or some sort of creature of the warm-weather-nighttime variety trilling away outside our bedroom window after dark. Last week’s cold rains left mild days of sunshine in their sloggy wake—and this past Saturday a discomfittingly hot wind from the south blew in. On our way to the souks we walked through the Cyber Parc—where the winds had blown down dozens of the huge Earth From Above images that parade through the park along red gravel paths like so many gigantic and breath-catching metal-framed hurdles. The photos are stunning anyway, even inside the covers of a coffee-table book, but in that over-large outdoor format they konk you over the head—which is what I was glad that didn’t actually do, since the wind continued to blow in great unexpected gusts.

We sat on the low brick wall that runs along most of the grid of paths and watched Hazel running to and fro across the gravel, scooping it, ruffling it, crawling in it, laying her white-shirted belly down to the gravely ground. For the first time since October, we made sure to sit in the shade. The hot wind found most people (Moroccans and those habituated) in down jackets and wool, hedging their bets, while the tourists bared as much skin as their sun-starved selves could manage. Which in some cases turned out to be a lot. Like San Francisco tourists—always optimistically shorts-clad in the shivery summer fog. More rain blew in just behind the hot wind, icy rain once again—so March begins, stormy and variable.