The Science of Time Storms

Time is one of those things humans pretend to understand because clocks exist. This is adorable. A clock is not time. A clock is a tiny machine with numbers on it that helps people arrive late with confidence. Time itself is much stranger. Time stretches. Time slows. Time speeds up when you are having fun, stops when someone says "we need to talk," and becomes legally meaningless in a DMV waiting room. A time storm is what happens when the polite agreement between past, present, and future begins to fail. It is not a weather event, although it may involve pressure changes, electrical disturbances, memory lightning, emotional hail, and one elderly man insisting this happened once in 1973 near a Waffle House. A time storm is not recognized by mainstream meteorology, which is cowardice. Meteorologists are very brave about hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, heat domes, atmospheric rivers, and naming winter storms like they are emotionally unavailable children, but they remain suspiciously silent about the possibility of Tuesday folding in half.