My flight from New York to Raleigh got diverted to Greensboro, NC thanks to a few thunderstorms that are hovering over the RDU airport. We’ve been told it could be another hour before the storms clear and we are allowed to take off for our intended destination. It’s already been two hours since we landed. While I am clearly frustrated at the delay, I figured I’ll make the most of it by blogging about my first impressions of North Carolina and contrasting them with those of Seattle.
About ten days back, I had to take a connecting flight out of Charlotte, NC. We were all boarded up, our flight taxied to the front of the line and was literally seconds away from racing to take off, when I saw an alarming formation of swirling dust and clouds from my window seat. The formation was probably a mile away from where we were parked. I asked the person sitting next to me, who had mentioned a few minutes ago that she lives in Charlotte, whether tornadoes ever touch down there. Her response was “rarely”, which gave me no comfort at all. I started wondering if an amateur storm-chaser is going to soon boast of rare footage of a plane caught in a tornado. Within seconds, there was hail, followed by pouring rain. I had a perverse anticipation brewing in me. Luckily, the swirling winds died down quickly even though the storm stayed on for another 45 minutes grounding the plane for that duration.
While my first impressions of North Carolina are thunderstorms and pouring rain, my first impression of Seattle, my home for five years, is a beautiful, sunny city surrounded by snow-covered mountains and water! It wasn’t even summer when I first visited Seattle to interview with Amazon. It was one of those very rare spring days when the rain gods of the pacific northwest take a break. Of course, by the time I finally packed my bags and moved to Seattle, it was almost fall. Within a month, the sun hid behind the clouds and my first impressions gave way to the more familiar images of gray skies.
Once again, reality may be very different from first impressions. This time, that would be a good thing 
Tags: first impressions, north carolina, seattle, thunderstorm, tornado, weather
