I wanted to be a meteorologist before I wanted to be anything else. As a kid I spent summer afternoons drawing full American weather maps, always coloring Chicago with the best weather in the country. I grew up to win Grammys doing something else entirely, and I love what I do. But there’s a particular, quiet dissatisfaction in a life where the nerdy endeavors stop making the cut. Maybe that’s why I still think in weather.
Here’s what the kid with the crayons knew: wind, in essence, is air moving from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure area. That’s all it is. Every gust that’s ever slammed a door or leveled a town was just the sky balancing itself.
I’ve come to think people work the same way—that every internal windstorm is pressure seeking equilibrium. So here’s a working theory about where that pressure comes from.
