Slaughterhouse 31

START TIME: 9:36 PM
END TIME: 11:17 PM
WORD COUNT: 598

“Name five instances where weather changed American history.” –Sam Gold

OK, first let’s get the list out of the way so that I don’t have to worry about listing everything before we start slugging out the word count. Now I’m not going to rank these or say that any one is more significant than the other; they’re just the ones that popped into my head.

1. D-Day, June 6, 1944.
2. Hurricane Katrina, August 2005.
3. September 11, 2001.
4. Dust Bowl, 1933.
5. Chicago Fire put out by light drizzle, October 10, 1871.

The rationale:

1. D-Day, June 6, 1944.

The odds were against Operation Overlord and the invasion of Normandy from the start. Two things were required: a full moon, to illuminate navigational beacons for the aircraft, and spring tides to keep the water as deep as possible to make it around the defenses placed in the surf. The weather had been so lousy at the beginning of June that a number of the German defense leadership was on leave (General Rommel was on leave celebrating his wife’s birthday) so it wasn’t the starters that were out there when the invasion started. If this nearly impossible task had failed, America’s expansion of interests through the 20th century and rise as a true world power would have been impossible.

2. Hurricane Katrina, August 2005.

The costliest disaster in the history of the United States and its deadliest hurricane since 1928 created a diaspora in the southern united States away from a vital shipping and tourism center from which the city has never fully recovered. Hurricane Katrina also demonstrated the terrifying incompetence of the federal disaster recovery apparatus. Upon being given six days notice that the storm would be catastrophic, the mayor did not issue the order to evacuate the city until 19 hours before the storm made landfall. At least 1,836 people were killed in the wake of the storm’s destruction and subsequent floods.

3. September 11, 2001.

“The weather was perfect.” While bad weather affected D-Day and Katrina was a meteorological event, the lack of any weather patterns on 9/11 meant that the flights would not be delayed, the passengers would not have been present in greater numbers after their flights the night before had been cancelled, thus providing more resistance against a mere four “muscle” hijackers who had chosen flights that were light on passengers and heavy on fuel. Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was delayed out of Newark. The disparities in time between the crashes would have been greater and could have minimized the loss of life on a day with more difficult visibility.

4. Dust Bowl, 1933.

I picked this for encouraging soil conservation and the rise of agribusiness in the wake of the expansion of the Great Depression. This also created the current Department of Agriculture Setup, which hands over great piles of money to small family farmers like ADM’s Andreas family. But it also contributed mightily to making California the most populous state in the nation, which will affect you all; a state with that many Congressional members has a lot of clot and the ability to say, “We would rather you provided Great Lakes water to us so we can continue to grow vegetables” and “The clean air standards for the vehicles that the American public is balking at buying will be raised if you’d like to sell cars here.”

5. Chicago Fire put out by light drizzle, October 10, 1871.

A sop to my hometown and the quintessentially American city. If the collection of wooden shanties and obvious violations of common sense that would ultimately make up the bulk of American zoning and fire prevention principles in the new century had stayed, Chicago would have stayed nondescript, without having the ability to undergo a complete redesign of its central core nearly 40 years after its establishment. It established that wood had been overused as a building material and inspired a spate of new design and construction techniques, which led to an appreciation for modern design and structure (and regrettably, an early lack of respect for tradition cast against the tide of progress).