the sea in the sky

There was something new in the firmament as Dawg and I lifted off from Apple Valley: clouds.

I can't begin to fathom why—all that nonsensical blather about global warming notwithstanding—but the weather here in the Mojave Desert has acting strangely for months. First we had a winter that was unseasonably wet. Now we have a spring which is unseasonably long. Windy, too. Spring's only supposed to last about, oh, two weeks around here. Normally, you have winter, which lasts about two months, with temperatures in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, accompanied by that wet stuff that falls out of the sky. Rain, I think they call it. Then you have spring, which goes for a couple of weeks to a month, temperatures in the 60s and 70s, with sprightly breezes (read: howling gales).

Then comes summer, which lasts about eight months, and is characterized by the sun being directly overhead, blasting torrential amounts of blasphemous heat onto the heads of the insane people who willingly choose to live here. There's also a paltry amount of wind (usually in the afternoons), perhaps a few cotton-ball clouds, and plenty of dust devils. Temperatures usually range between 98 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. To escape the heat, animals dive underground and pant heavily. People go inside, shut the doors and windows, snap on the A/C and watch godawful daytime TV. In the evening, when the temperatures go down into the low 90s, animals and humans alike emerge to eat, drink, play and procreate.

It's those precious few weeks of spring which are to be cherished. One can actually stay outdoors the whole day through without melting into a gelatinous puddle. Things may actually be accomplished outside, such as chores, gardening, and home improvement, as well as more recreational affairs like exercise, picnics, even the consumption of a good book or a glass of lemonade. The Mojave Spring of 2010 has been going on now for two months. It's May Frickin' 27th out there, and it's currently in the low 60s, with winds of 25 miles per hour, gusting to 35. If that doesn't sound bad to you, that's enough to rattle the frame of my sturdy hacienda and howl around the eaves like a ravening monster. Makes the old folks at the airport huddle into their fleece and grumble about it being "still winter."

Normally I wouldn't mind this state of affairs. Sure, the wind dries out the eyeballs. Makes me look like I've been out on a bender the previous night. But hey, some days I really was out on a bender the previous night, so there's truth in advertising after all. However, wind is very bad for drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles don't fly so well in wind. Did I tell you that one of them went flipping off the runway at Victorville a few weeks back? Yep. Wind caught it just when it was landing. Knocked it into the dirt. Totaled it. That's three million dollars, shot. All because of a few fast-moving air particles.

Another thing we've been getting a lot of during this two-month spring is that wet stuff. Rain, is it? Yes. Showers of wet stuff, occurring every few weeks, have been falling out of the sky. There's been enough wet stuff to make an unprecedented amount of green stuff come up. Ordinarily the spring rains bring grass, some wildflowers, and turn the sagebrush and other shrubs green instead of brown or beige. This year's rains have worked miracles. I was out walking the other day (down by those high-tension lines I told you about). I actually saw lilies growing by the side of the track. Yes, real lilies: pale and somewhat desiccated, but lilies nonetheless, their green parts flapping in the "sprightly breeze."

This is exceedingly odd for a place that's only supposed to get 10 inches of rainfall a year. It's still cool, and it's not even all that dry. Why, I bet Death Valley barely got into the nineties yesterday. We actually had a fire in the wood stove a few days ago. Downright wacky, that. When it's windy, we don't fly, because Predators don't like too much wind beneath their wings. But winds weren't our only worry this morning. We also had clouds.

Now, I've never flown in clouds before. Not in, around, or near them. Clouds themselves are something unusual in the Mojave, down below 10,000 feet, anyway. I'm not qualified to fly in clouds yet, being only a student pilot, not having gotten my instrument rating. See, pilots who don't have an instrument rating are supposed to remain...let me see here, now...[consults the Federal Aviation Regulations, section 91.155, basic VFR weather minimums]...500 feet below, 1,000 feet above, and 2,000 feet horizontal, clear of clouds. ("VFR" stands for "Visual Flight Rules, and "IFR" stands for "Instrument Flight Rules," where you fly by using your instruments. Only pilots who've done an extra 40 hours of flight training and gotten their instrument ratings can fly IFR, but they can now fly through clouds, above 18,000 feet, and in poor visibility.)

So you may imagine, when Sierra Hotel lumbered off the runway, and I banked 'er left, into a climbing 180-degree turn, and the sun broke through the layers of clouds, lines and patches and streaks of them, all laying over the sky like a forest of cloud-trees cut down and strewn everywhere... Well, it was quite something. You know what it was like. Remember the first time you were in an airplane, and it climbed above the clouds, and the sun broke over the cloudscape, and all the multitudinous castles and skyscrapers and cliffs and buttes and towers and minarets, all inchoate white, spread themselves out beneath you like another world, an entire continent laid out in the heavens, a stormy sea in the sky? That's what it was like. Only I was flying myself through this white wonderland, and I had a much better view.

Dawg and I had gone up at the request of the Guard, so that we might ascertain the altitude of the cloud bases. This was because the Predator doesn't like clouds either, and the FAA doesn't like it when the Predators fly through clouds, particularly in civilian airspace. So our job was to determine whether we could escort the UAV through the clouds, up through the scattered cloud layer, through the holes and apertures, flank the lines of battle, make an end run around the puffy things. So it was that I, a student pilot, a greenhorn, a cloud virgin, got to fly above the clouds.

It was pure magic. It was not a single layer of clouds, not at first; they were scattered everywhere. It was more like an island chain than a continent: here there'd be a line of cotton balls; farther on some solid chains, cruising northeast, tall and proud, flags flying like battleships, the shortest of them easily 20 miles long; higher up the skies were streaked with cirrus and contrails. Everywhere were tiny wisps, huge buttressed watchtowers of cumulus, and odd-shaped clouds of no description which bridged gaps, hurried everywhere between their bigger brothers. The sky was turned into a patchwork quilt through which the sun shone, two horizons sparkling in the distance, one white and one brown, entrancing patterns of light and shadow dancing on the dusty ground below. I held the Mooney at a steady climb. Going 110 miles per hour, climbing 500 feet per minute, engine roaring at 2500 revolutions, we climbed ever higher. We reached the picket line, the first hurdle of clouds, and leaped over it, breaching the fortress walls. Then we were in the thick of it. We turned left to dodge a monster, a lumpy white beast with spikes along its back, its clawed limbs stretched out to the side; then we swung right again and headed for the mother ship. A solid, unbroken layer of clouds hovered over the Mojave River, 15 miles north of Victorville. It looked bad. The cloud base was down to about 8,000 feet. The restricted areas were capped with an inexhaustible supply of water and ice, suspended in the sky like a blanket.

Two hours later we went up to check again. This time conditions were good enough to bring the drone. Dawg piloted the Mooney like it was his old Navy jet, calmly relaying instructions to the drone driver. "Hold course 040." "Come right." "If you come ten degrees left, Grizzly, there's a nice big hole there you can probably make. Come left and give it your best climb." And so we went, following the drone as it clambered up an invisible ladder, turning right, turning left, dodging the extended arms of the clouds, which came from all sides and swiped at it like giant cat's paws. Up the drone leaped, straight it flew, curving through gaps, breaches in the cloud's defensive line, rabbit-holes in the sky. Once the gray ship ran straight into a cotton ball and disappeared entirely. It was a tense moment. Anything could happen. It was as if the clouds had opened up a maw in the middle of the blue and swallowed our charge whole.
"Keep your eyes open," Dawg said, tersely.
Seconds later, the Predator burst from the far side of the cloud, like a whale breaching in the breakers. It was a Nantucket sleigh ride at 8,000 feet. And then we'd made it. The skies cleared. The sun came down, and the cloud shadows danced. It was a clean shot to Four Corners. "That was great, chase," came the voice of the drone pilot. "But we just got word of severe turbulence, and we've been ordered to go home." A regretful grin lit up Dawg's face, the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

Another day on the job.