Percy Jones' Hole
Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioEmbed of the latest thunder track at the bottom... it's creation described in the entry.
In early 1994 & 1995, when I was capturing the ambient sounds of many different places with my stereo cassette recorder, from train stations and restaurants, to morning birds in the park... the holy grail was a good blasting thunderstorm!
I had a pair of condenser mikes, I'd wired up out the window, to plug into my recorder just for that purpose, and a few blank tapes at the ready.
When it seemed like we might see some action, I had the TV in the livingroom tuned to the weather channel, so I could see the local radar, every ten minutes on the tens!
Where was the system?.. What way was it moving?... and was it gonna move through Aurora?
But... annoyingly... it seemed like almost every big storm system moving in from the west (as they do) always either slipped north of us, or south of us, at the last minute!
It's something you don't notice or get pissed about unless you're me, and you desperately want to record a big banger.
------------{=0=}------------
A few years later, working as an apartment maintenance guy, I spent a lot of time flipping vacants with my co-worker, Percy Jones. He was in his mid seventies at the time, and had lived in Aurora for over 50 years.
It was summer, and a storm was coming. And without my saying anything. He said we didn't need to worry about it because they always go north, or go south, at the last minute.
"That's true!" I cried. "I've been noticing that for years!"
Percy said, "We're livin' in a hole."
------------{=0=}------------
He was exactly right, and it's still true today!
For some reason, that I cannot explain, Aurora sits in some special location, relative to the jet stream... and maybe Lake Michigan off to the east... where huge, violent storm systems almost always slip around us to the north or the south, just before hitting town.
In modern times, I've even seen it on the radar on my phone, where the big system is bearing down on us... it's five minutes away... you can see the lightning out the windows and hear the distant rumbles... and then, if it does not change course... it just dissipates!
Violent storm systems, creating severe thunderstorm warnings... have just vanished, as they got to the outskirts of town. I saw that last year, the year before, and the year before.
And whenever I do see that, his words come back to me.
"We're livin' in a hole."
------------{=0=}------------
I have wracked my brains trying to figure out what's causing the hole!
Elgin to the north gets hit every time! Oswego to the south gets hit every time! Naperville to the east, and Chicago itself... get hit every time! It is specifically ONLY Aurora that is in the hole, but why?
I should first point out that we always do get rain. The hole doesn't keep out the rain, or the snow. The hole only keeps out the actual thunderheads that are generating all the lightning that results in nearby strikes, and thus, fabulously crashing thunder claps.
We hear the distant rumbles. We hear some bigger booms. And occasionally, a few great bolts do strike close enough to be impressive. But 98% of all the amazing thunder that gets generated in northern Illinois... steers clear of us... and has, since at least the 1950s, when Percy Jones first noticed the phenomenon.
------------{=0=}------------
1) THE MAGNETIC THEORY:
My first theory was that maybe for some reason there's more iron in the soil around here, or... we just have way more iron drain infrastructure? The idea here was that if lightning were to magnetize the ground enough, then maybe that would tend to repel impending storm systems, which themselves have a magnetic charge.
An alternate version of this theory was that maybe there's an anomaly in the Earth's magnetic field here in Aurora.
But if either were true... then our compasses should all be wrong, and we'd know about that.
2) THE JUPITER THEORY:
The planet Jupiter has it's famous red spot, where the air just kinda moves in a big, slow vortex, and all the other bands of wind either slip above or below it.
Do we know why? I don't think so. And there's not even any land, lakes, or rivers below to blame it on. It's just... some quirk of fluid dynamics around a sphere. There just has to be a spot somewhere... thats a persistent... hole!
Maybe Aurora, on a much smaller scale, is just that!.. It's just a mathematical, fluid dynamical hole in the jet stream of the northern hemisphere.
The geography here isn't much different from Oswego, or Elgin... which are both on the same Fox River... and both about the same distance from the edge of the mammoth Lake Michigan. There's not mountains around. There's no craters.
Maybe it's just... math!
3) THE MAGIC THEORY
In this theory, it's just magic. Maybe the native Americans performed some kind of ritual in ancient times. Maybe some kind of evil cosmic being is sleeping below the ground. Or maybe God, or the gods, just... know there's a guy here who wants to record thunder, and they're just being dicks!
------------{=0=}------------
Now, at this point you might be thinking, Yeah, well, this sounds like confirmation bias. Just as many storms pass through your town as any other, but you're sleeping, or you're gone at work, or you just sat one out without recording it because you were busy, and then forgot about it.
And my answer would be... you don't know who you're dealing with!
For the past five years, I have literally had a device at the ready to record any thunder at home, whether I was sleeping or not. And I even set it up with Team Viewer, and put it on the window sill, with a charging cable plugged in, so that I could REMOTELY hit the record button at home, while I was away at work in Elgin.
And In Elgin, I would hit that remote record button... and check the radar, while the storm was raging outside my workplace... and witness how down in Aurora, it was not happening!
I have not missed a single storm event in this area, for the past five years! And I can tell you with great confidence... WE ARE LIVING IN A HOLE!
------------{=0=}------------
Proof of that... kind of... is that I did manage to capture the one good storm, per year, that got close enough to sound spectacular. We're talking a couple good hours, over an entire year!
But I caught the one good one in 2018. The one good one in 2019. And the one good one in 2020... that didn't arrive until October, in the middle of the night.
And then in 2021... we just never got the one good one!
But by 2021, I was so vigilant about capturing even the bad ones... with nothing but distant rumbles... or nothing but rain... and a bunch of random, one-off, spectacular thunder cracks... that I was able... after a year... to edit all of it together into a really good, fake storm, of around 20 minutes.
------------{=0=}------------
So while, Thun Thunder Fun, is my most prized playlist. And while I've gotten it up to a couple hours of great thunder... it's taken me four years to do it... and the most recent track had to be synthesized out of scraps from the previous year!
I'll keep it up though. I've always got that recorder ready to go at a moments notice. And now I know... every take matters, if it can be part of a mash-up in the future.
But I am NOT living in the right town for this hobby!
°¦}
THUN THUNDER FUN PLAYLIST
In early 1994 & 1995, when I was capturing the ambient sounds of many different places with my stereo cassette recorder, from train stations and restaurants, to morning birds in the park... the holy grail was a good blasting thunderstorm!
I had a pair of condenser mikes, I'd wired up out the window, to plug into my recorder just for that purpose, and a few blank tapes at the ready.
When it seemed like we might see some action, I had the TV in the livingroom tuned to the weather channel, so I could see the local radar, every ten minutes on the tens!
Where was the system?.. What way was it moving?... and was it gonna move through Aurora?
But... annoyingly... it seemed like almost every big storm system moving in from the west (as they do) always either slipped north of us, or south of us, at the last minute!
It's something you don't notice or get pissed about unless you're me, and you desperately want to record a big banger.
A few years later, working as an apartment maintenance guy, I spent a lot of time flipping vacants with my co-worker, Percy Jones. He was in his mid seventies at the time, and had lived in Aurora for over 50 years.
It was summer, and a storm was coming. And without my saying anything. He said we didn't need to worry about it because they always go north, or go south, at the last minute.
"That's true!" I cried. "I've been noticing that for years!"
Percy said, "We're livin' in a hole."
He was exactly right, and it's still true today!
For some reason, that I cannot explain, Aurora sits in some special location, relative to the jet stream... and maybe Lake Michigan off to the east... where huge, violent storm systems almost always slip around us to the north or the south, just before hitting town.
In modern times, I've even seen it on the radar on my phone, where the big system is bearing down on us... it's five minutes away... you can see the lightning out the windows and hear the distant rumbles... and then, if it does not change course... it just dissipates!
Violent storm systems, creating severe thunderstorm warnings... have just vanished, as they got to the outskirts of town. I saw that last year, the year before, and the year before.
And whenever I do see that, his words come back to me.
"We're livin' in a hole."
I have wracked my brains trying to figure out what's causing the hole!
Elgin to the north gets hit every time! Oswego to the south gets hit every time! Naperville to the east, and Chicago itself... get hit every time! It is specifically ONLY Aurora that is in the hole, but why?
I should first point out that we always do get rain. The hole doesn't keep out the rain, or the snow. The hole only keeps out the actual thunderheads that are generating all the lightning that results in nearby strikes, and thus, fabulously crashing thunder claps.
We hear the distant rumbles. We hear some bigger booms. And occasionally, a few great bolts do strike close enough to be impressive. But 98% of all the amazing thunder that gets generated in northern Illinois... steers clear of us... and has, since at least the 1950s, when Percy Jones first noticed the phenomenon.
1) THE MAGNETIC THEORY:
My first theory was that maybe for some reason there's more iron in the soil around here, or... we just have way more iron drain infrastructure? The idea here was that if lightning were to magnetize the ground enough, then maybe that would tend to repel impending storm systems, which themselves have a magnetic charge.
An alternate version of this theory was that maybe there's an anomaly in the Earth's magnetic field here in Aurora.
But if either were true... then our compasses should all be wrong, and we'd know about that.
2) THE JUPITER THEORY:
The planet Jupiter has it's famous red spot, where the air just kinda moves in a big, slow vortex, and all the other bands of wind either slip above or below it.
Do we know why? I don't think so. And there's not even any land, lakes, or rivers below to blame it on. It's just... some quirk of fluid dynamics around a sphere. There just has to be a spot somewhere... thats a persistent... hole!
Maybe Aurora, on a much smaller scale, is just that!.. It's just a mathematical, fluid dynamical hole in the jet stream of the northern hemisphere.
The geography here isn't much different from Oswego, or Elgin... which are both on the same Fox River... and both about the same distance from the edge of the mammoth Lake Michigan. There's not mountains around. There's no craters.
Maybe it's just... math!
3) THE MAGIC THEORY
In this theory, it's just magic. Maybe the native Americans performed some kind of ritual in ancient times. Maybe some kind of evil cosmic being is sleeping below the ground. Or maybe God, or the gods, just... know there's a guy here who wants to record thunder, and they're just being dicks!
Now, at this point you might be thinking, Yeah, well, this sounds like confirmation bias. Just as many storms pass through your town as any other, but you're sleeping, or you're gone at work, or you just sat one out without recording it because you were busy, and then forgot about it.
And my answer would be... you don't know who you're dealing with!
For the past five years, I have literally had a device at the ready to record any thunder at home, whether I was sleeping or not. And I even set it up with Team Viewer, and put it on the window sill, with a charging cable plugged in, so that I could REMOTELY hit the record button at home, while I was away at work in Elgin.
And In Elgin, I would hit that remote record button... and check the radar, while the storm was raging outside my workplace... and witness how down in Aurora, it was not happening!
I have not missed a single storm event in this area, for the past five years! And I can tell you with great confidence... WE ARE LIVING IN A HOLE!
Proof of that... kind of... is that I did manage to capture the one good storm, per year, that got close enough to sound spectacular. We're talking a couple good hours, over an entire year!
But I caught the one good one in 2018. The one good one in 2019. And the one good one in 2020... that didn't arrive until October, in the middle of the night.
And then in 2021... we just never got the one good one!
But by 2021, I was so vigilant about capturing even the bad ones... with nothing but distant rumbles... or nothing but rain... and a bunch of random, one-off, spectacular thunder cracks... that I was able... after a year... to edit all of it together into a really good, fake storm, of around 20 minutes.
So while, Thun Thunder Fun, is my most prized playlist. And while I've gotten it up to a couple hours of great thunder... it's taken me four years to do it... and the most recent track had to be synthesized out of scraps from the previous year!
I'll keep it up though. I've always got that recorder ready to go at a moments notice. And now I know... every take matters, if it can be part of a mash-up in the future.
But I am NOT living in the right town for this hobby!
°¦}
