It’s sort of strange to look out my office window right now.

The clouds are moving the wrong way.

It’s funny how something like ‘general directional heading of clouds’ gets stuck in the back of your head and you don’t even know that it’s something that makes up your perception of place until, well, you come in to work one morning and look out the window and spend a minute or two trying to determine why the grand vista of Route 100 looks different.

And then you realize that it’s because you’re used to the clouds coming straight out of the west, or maybe from the south, or somewhere in between. Today? East-Northeast.

Ernesto. Most people say it er-NES-to. I think it’s funnier to say ernest-o.

Anyway, Ernie, thanks for shaking things up.

I think that’s why I like storms so much. I don’t like the loss of life, I don’t like injury and I don’t like seeing dreams crushed. But, I must confess, I do like the rest. All of it: inclement weather, weather reports, school delays, road closures, dampness, wind, chaos.

It reminds us that we are not in control.

We are, I think, a society that is comfortable with the illusion that we call the shots. That we know it all, and if there are still one or two question marks, they’re only there because we haven’t taken the time to erase them yet. We like to think that if we throw enough money or elbow grease at a problem, we can make it go away.

And then nature throws 42 inches of snow at us and grinds us to a halt. And then nature whips us with a tropical weather system and sends us all to the store to buy milk, bread, and battery powered radios.

I like storms because they’re humbling. They remind us that we are, in a way, insignificant.

Sometimes that can be a healthy reality check.