On the first day of the month of June, I was with a healthcare worker. As she drove from Columbia to Elkridge, a dark, lowering sky made me uneasy. The worker asked at one point, “Is that a tornado?”.

It sure was. I had never seen one before. Little did I know, there was another one right behind us, a stone’s throw from where my appointment had been.

Doctors…

It was the wrong day to be out. Ahead, the funnel was in the distance, in the very direction we would be going. I estimated that it was over Elkridge just before the sky opened up and rain lashed the windshield too fast for the wipers to keep up with, and then I lost track of it.

Although not far from BWI/Marshall Airport, Elkridge was spared, but someone spotted it grounded at the airport. Once home, reports from local news came in from areas where no storm chasers with access to radar roamed. Nobody could do better than relay sightings. Those became confusing and only later would I find the reason for that confusion: on 1 June, 2012, the records say, 12 tornadoes hit Maryland, a nightmarish event. Although the state isn’t a hot spot for twisters, they aren’t that rare; some have even been severe.

But the next day I did hear the count at 13 tornadoes. Now I can only find records of 12. Still, an extraordinary storm, formidable to be sure.

I believe only one fatality was recorded, but what followed would be far worse.

A high pressure system had parked over the Midwest. It was big. In a summer month, such a mass of air can tend to stop, remaining stationary and preventing anything weaker to budge it. And that’s bad because it sets itself up as an upper level dome, and that’s exactly what it sounds like: a dome, like a structure, with the whole ecosystem trapped beneath it. Air won’t move, and because the pressure where heat should rise is too high to allow it, heat stays near the ground. It becomes like propane, a gas that’s heavier than air. Propane explosions can happen with even a slight leak. The gas doesn’t disperse quickly enough and a source of ignition can follow the gas right to its source. Grills on rear decks of expensive homes have blown up, taking half or more of the house with it. Many times, nearby homes take extensive damage as well because post-1960s, yards became progressively smaller.

As if it were a heavy gas like propane, the air under the dome heated up to record temperatures. The heatwave of 2012 was underway.

Drought rules the day in such a system. This was not a direct cause of global warming, but a weather system. One that global warming certainly didnt help, and one that hadn’t been seen since the 1930s in the area. Forget degree days; every day was a degree day. Temperatures reached 100 and higher with unrelenting consistency and if weather were a living thing, this animal was vicious and relentless. People without air conditioning died. Cooling centers couldn’t help more than a set number of people, and farmers of tobacco, corn, tomatoes and other vegetables shrugged and watched everything die. Even irrigation systems couldn’t save them.

As June wore on, green grass turned brown and ceased to grow. Nobody but fools thought about going near a lawnmower. It was too hot and it wasn’t necessary. The demand for water to homes was great, but reservoirs were so pressured that Governor O’Malley had a team working on a supply from the Susquehanna River above the dam for areas west of it.

Finally there came June 29th and the very worst the stagnant system could dish out. Baltimore City reached 106°F, a record for that date, but worse was on the way. Something nobody would ever forget.

It wasn’t tornadoes. It was much more bizarre than that.

On that day, what seemed like a mere thunderstorm started somewhere in Iowa. The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) took notice. A shape like a bow (as in archery) began to form along the leading edge. Heat fed the storm instead of blunting it. The ouward arch of the bow pointed east. Everything in its path was going to get damaged.

By 23:00, Maryland was under the gun. As rare as it was, this storm survived the crossing of the Appalachian Mountains without breaking apart. Average storm systems are often broken while crossing the mountains, with cells usually surviving to hit Noth and south of Baltimore. Not always, but if a storm stays intact, it’s weakened. This barrier can make things easier to take, but if enough heat remains east of the range, the cells reform and act as though highly pissed off.

This front didn’t have any regard for mountains, rivers, valleys or any other geographic feature. It was a honey badger storm. Didn’t give a shit.

In the hours between 29 and 30 June, high winds came through and caught me off-guard. I was outside on the deck, having a cigarette. I saw some flashes, some cloud to cloud and cloud to ground, of lightning, heard wind, and the next thing I knew, I was grabbed by a gust and almost thrown over the railing. I had never been hit with wind like that. My cigarette vanished into the night, ripped from my hand, then I was bent over the handrail and the air was sucked out of my chest.

In that instant, I had probably been hit by a gust over 70 m.p.h. and you don’t forget a thing like that. You never do.

I had no idea what just happened. The next day I learned that the storms were part of the heatwave. The straight-line winds, called a durecho, happened all the time in the Midwest. Crossing the mountains, that was rare.

My daughter just missed the tornado outbreak but arrived in time from Oklahoma to see the durecho. After living in Oklahoma and North Carolina, it must have seemed like nothing to her.

I never had time to talk about any of this with her. By July 4th, she was dead. While I grieved, on 20 July the Aurora, Colorado cinema mass shooting occurred. James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 58 others. 2012 could not end soon enough for me.

But it was far from over. On 29 October, Hurricane Sandy went subtropical and hit every east-coast state from Maine to Florida and went far inland as Superstorm Sandy (which retained hurricane-force winds after New Jersey landfall). It was a major disaster, but more trouble was on the way.

On 14 December in Newtown, Connecticut, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and 6 adults. He had earlier killed his mother. He died by his own hand.

2012 was a year none of us can ever, and must never, forget. Too many people lost their lives, some by the weather, some by murder. And it never, ever can make any sense unless we keep trying to learn its lessons. Because so far, we have failed to learn a goddamn thing.

I will never forget 2012. My daughter did not survive the year, and to this day, I cry. I grieve, I hurt.

But I am not alone. There are lots of people who curse that awful year.

An awful, terrible year.

If the United States had started 2012 with any innocence left, then by the time it ended, the last of it was gone.