Not just the times that are achanging

 "Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way"

Joni Mitchell

 

All my life I have studied the clouds at Red Lake. Not just because they can be beautiful, awesome or menacing but because they tell the future. They are the weather forecast. As I plied the waters between town and camp, I knew what was coming: glassy calm or a roaring tempest, gentle rain or a deluge.

There was something strange about the clouds at Red Lake last summer. They didn't behave the same. For instance, weather systems have always moved from west to east. Not this year. In fact, one day there were small storms moving simultaneously in all directions. I went out fishing right after a storm had passed, moving west to east as normal, and looking north, saw another storm over Pipestone Bay, heading south. The whole storm was also rotating and had a shelf cloud in a circle that spread for miles. I went back to the cabin and watched from the dock but the storm missed us entirely, moving over Trout Bay. To the east I could see another thunderhead and realized it was headed north.

The next day I met Brian who had seen it all too. He called them mini-cyclones and said they are common in Kansas. What are they doing up here?