Storm Breakers

There was a break in the storm, a break between storms. A few days earlier, fire had taken out the city’s power, and now water threatened to do the same. The “atmospheric river,” the “Pineapple Express,” the potential “bomb cyclone” — so many colorful names for what amounted to endlessly grey days. An urban hike to the bay served as an unintentionally ironic way to spend the time when rain wasn’t prohibitively pouring — a walk between the raindrops, as the song goes. Being outside felt good, even as the gathering clouds encouraged a near-term retreat. At the water, the waves seemed more powerful than usual, a microcosm of the week’s weather: fierce pounding, followed by relative quiet, then more water-on-land violence. They're called “breakers” for a reason. I raised my phone and hit the red record button, and almost instantly a distant emergency vehicle’s siren inserted itself, underlining the severity of current circumstances. Listening back to the recording, after I got home, I knew to expect that siren, and still I had to restart the track a few times, because I wasn’t certain if the siren I heard was coming out of my speakers or leaking in from outside, where clouds grew darker by the minute.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 3:56pm on Wednesday, December 24, 2025, at Baker Beach in San Francisco.