LITTLE ROCK — Dear Otus,
I invited relatives from Pickering, Ontario, to attend Riverfest this year so they could witness the glorious arrival of Arkansas’ annual humidity pods. Although it was hot enough to roast a weenie, no pods showed up.
Now my third cousins think I’m making the pods up. What should I tell them?
- Lou Gubrious, Perryville
Dear Lou,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you.
I know a pod-less Riverfest was a major disappointment for you, as it was for countless others, but humidity pods are tricky.
Historically at least 57 percent of the time, the pods have arrived in the area before Riverfest’s big closing fireworks display. I would have loved to see Snoop Dogg get podilized, but the meteorological and atmospheric conditions weren’t right.
That’s probably for the best. In the past, occasional rogue humidity pods have played havoc with the ill-prepared crowds.
Many recall 2004 when the dreaded Mexican pods - not the usual, more docile South Texas pods - stunned Riverfest revelers with their sudden arrival.
Bob Jezek of Sheridan, Wyo., was visiting relatives in Little Rock when he experienced his first pod arrival.
“It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen,” Jezek later told a reporter. “We were enjoying the comedy stylings of Patches the Clown when the sky dimmed and birds started roosting everywhere. It was like they were afraid to fly.
“We looked up and there were thousands of shiny globules coming from the south, just floating a couple of hundred feet in the air. Then we got all sticky and the things slowly glopped together and everybody started to sweat. Our relatives just laughed at us, but we were concerned there for a while.”
It was 2009 when a rogue pod actually slammed into the klown klatch, sealing Patches and his 10 horrified buddies to the Budweiser Stage for three hours, until paramedics could free them with the Jaws of Life.
Tragically, the clowns were so psychologically scarred, they have not been back.
The huge amorphous globules can now be tracked almost from the moment they “breach” from their wintering grounds in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Normally we would have seen our first small pod event by the end of May,” said Robert Guiteramo of the National Weather Service in New Orleans. “But the exceedingly dry spring this year and late formation of the Bermuda High have kept the pods hovering off shore near Port Isabel, Texas.”
Doppler Radar, Global Positioning Systems and Skew-T Suction Vortices Detectors help the Weather Service with early pod warnings that will avoid some of the panic of the past.
When the pods finally do break loose, Guiteramo expects the resulting barrage to be swift and merciless.
“This is one of those rare 20- to 30-year cycles that we in the weather business call La Brujitas,” Guiteramo said. “The pods are congealing into what we term superpods.They’ll really be packing a punch once they get here.”
For newcomers to Arkansas (especially recent Yankee immigrants in the Bella Vista quarantine facility), the annual humidity pods work in conjunction with the infamous Bermuda High to raise the humidity across the state almost to levels on which you could float a bass boat.
They arrive in clumps that have been reported to be as large as a blimp. Most, however, are the size of a 1985 Chevrolet Silverado. Some podlettes are as small as softballs.
Scientists rate the pod swarm severity on the Fujita Pod Scale. The FPS goes from FPS0 (weak) to FPS5 (massive). This year’s humidity pod event is forecast to be FPS4 (profound).
Meanwhile, award-winning research into the pods’ history continues at the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center.
Recent excavations in Riverfront Park near the belvedere have uncovered crystalized humidity pods that entrapped prehistoric mosquitoes with four-inch wingspans.
“It just goes to show we’ve always had humidity pods with us,” noted the center’s chief archaeologist, Emmett Brown. “And we’ll always probably have them every summer until the next ice age.”
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you to keep on top of pod progress at pods.usa.com.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail:
HomeStyle, Pages 34 on 06/02/2012