Carol and I went for a walk on Monday. A stiff wind coming out of the northeast hit us in our faces as we crossed the bridge to Fairhaven: a nor’easter had moved in. That evening, coming out of a church meeting, the wind caught the Endowment Committee when we stepped outside the door; once we were out, it slammed the church door shut: bang! We all hunched our heads down a little. I walked next to Ned as we headed to the parking lot. “Boy, the wind’s pretty stiff,” I said. “On the radio they said it’s up to thirty-five knots,” he said.

Rain beating on the roof awakened me sometime in the middle of the night.

Rain off and on all morning yesterday. The mailman, not our regular mailman but a fill-in, came in to the church office looking soaked. Linda said something about the rain. He said, “Yeah, but from here on the route is pretty much indoors. After this I go to a couple of the big buildings downtown, and I’ll be inside most of the rest of the morning.”

By the time I left for lunch, it had stopped raining.

More rain after dark last night. It awakened me once again: a sudden hard rain, blown by the stiff wind against the skylights. I didn’t know it, but the barometer was still dropping, and it bottomed out around two in the morning. No rain, but this time I was awakened by aching joints: the dampness and the low pressure finally got to me. I took an ibuprofen.

Finally, I got to sleep.

The clouds spit rain off and on all day today. Gloomy and damp. The big glowing numbers of the bank thermometer down at Union and Purchase never seemed to stir from 45 degrees, cold enough to make your hands ache if you walked for more than fifteen minutes. At seven o’clock this evening, I was sick of being cooped up inside. I went for a walk down along the harborfront. The wind had shifted into the north. The gloom slowly increased as somewhere behind the clouds the sun went down.

A real spring nor’easter.

The National Weather Service radar shows the storm is slowly moving off shore, big long strands curling around behind it: bringing us more clouds, more drizzle, cool temperatures, slowly rising barometric pressure. They’re predicting the storm won’t be fully past until Sunday.