Page 69 of Sheltering Instinct

“What do you want us to do, Mom?”

“Well, switch places.”

“We’re not allowed out of the vehicle.” Gwen protested.

“Can you pull over for one moment, please?” Iris called.

And, with laughter in her eyes, Tess switched places with Iris.

After retucking her blanket, Tess faced Gwen. “That one model of the wobble impacted Angola all the way down to the Namibian border.”

“What did you think?” Gwen asked.

“It would be unprecedented. But these are the times we live in, right?” Tess tipped her head. “Never say never. Since it wasn’t my model, I didn’t follow through to see if Angola was warned to put it on their radar—so to speak. But if that outlier proved to be accurate, the wobble would have a significant impact.”

“When would this happen?” Craig asked. “Wobbling? I didn’t know that was a weather term.”

“Dad, it’s like this. When there’s a powerful storm, it’s not on a highway heading in a straight line. The movements that modify the storm elements around are called ‘wobbles.’ When you’re looking at them on satellite, the shifts can seem pretty insignificant. But just the smallest movement can create an enormous impact.”

“The air current is wobbling now,” Tess said. “It’s been impacting the weather in Europe all summer,”

Gwen turned to Levi. “Look there.” She pointed to an animal nibbling on a tuft of dried vegetation. “That’s a kudu.”

“We think that wobble accounts for the torrential rains and floods in Europe,” Tess explained.

“And that’s why it’s been a relatively calm hurricane season from the Caribbean up into the United States, except, of course,” Gwen added, “for the system that affected my aunt.”

“What would that spaghetti look like?” Enrico asked. “I’m sorry, I’m jumping back to Angola. What would happen if that one outlier wobble line was accurate, and it impacted Angola?”

“A deluge,” Tess said. “For example, Morocco had six years of drought. Suddenly, there was a lot of rain in a short time span.”

“Caused by the wobble,” Gwen said. “Sounds innocuous, it absolutely isn’t.”

Tess gathered her hair and held it in a tight fist as the wind picked up. “One of their lakes, Lake Iriqui, had been dry for over fifty years, and it filled back up.”

“Wow. How much rain came down?” Iris asked.

Gwen shrugged. “Like four inches in twenty-four hours.”

“I mean,” Iris fussed with her blanket, pulling it up under her chin, “that’s a lot of rain in twenty-four hours, but enough to fill a lake?”

“Because there are sand dunes.” Gwen shuffled around a bit, and now it was her hip that pressed against Levi.

There was nowhere for him to go to give her more room. He didn’t want Tess to think that he was inviting this behavior, so he put his hands on the seat back in front of him.

“There’s no vegetation to absorb the excess water. What’s going to happen to all that rain? It’s going to run directly to low-lying areas and pool.”

“And the people?” Enrico asked.

“On the positive side of the human equation,” Tess said, “the reservoirs are full. Those who suffered from the drought will now have a source of water.”

“And the negative?” Levi asked, looking over Gwen’s head.

“Because of the length of the drought and the arid conditions that persisted for decades, the people might well have built their homes in that area,” Tess said. “Or houses werebuilt of materials like clay that worked well under the baking sun but would disintegrate in water. Also, looking forward, the weather in the area may change for years to come because of the increased moisture in the air as the water evaporates again. What will that look like? We have no idea. This isn’t something we account for in our computer models. More rain, at this point, will degrade their infrastructure and might make getting supplies over the Atlas mountains as difficult as it was when they had their earthquake.” Tess pulled her hat lower over her ears. “The fast-changing weather patterns have become a challenge for WorldCares. We work hard to stabilize populations so people don’t feel pressured to migrate away from the land and culture they know. But the weather is shifting faster than the people can adapt.”

“WorldCares has a team of biotechnologists like my Mom and Dad, trying to forecast what strains of crops will survive weather extremes.”

“Ah, the advancement of science. Did you know they’ve figured out that feeding cows red algae reduced cow farts?” Craig grinned.

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