Some Quick Thoughts on Weather

Why are we so surprised by the weather? I spend quite a bit of time outside, and I remain guilty of this. I suppose we like to have things to complain about, and mother nature is a frequent provider. Maybe we complain about the weather so much because there's very little guilt associated with such a complaint. The adage "better to light a candle than curse the darkness," doesn't really come into play. The more I think about this, though, the more I realize that however guiltless these complaints and expressions of shock are, they are by no means smart.

My sudden desire to rant about this arose over the weekend. I was subjected to a wild swing in the weather during outdoor activities, and caught myself saying things like "I can't believe how fast the weather turned." Friday, during a bicycle training ride, the weather went from cool and brisk to cold and steadily raining. By Sunday, it was so warm and sunny that an afternoon game of wiffle ball brought on a moderate sunburn. Sure, this was dramatic... but at 27 experience should've taught me by now to expect such swings in the weather. Changing, after all, is what weather does best. I can't quite understand why we, as human beings, find ourselves so taken aback by these changes.

Take the term "freak storm," for example. Clearly, it is used so often that 'freak' is wildly inaccurate at best and willfully ignorant at worst.

I was caught in a "freak hailstorm" last Spring. It was one of approximately seventeen thousand such storms last year.

Take for another example the winter of 2009-2010 in this region. It earned such monikers as the "snowpocalypse," and "snowmageddon." I did my own share of crying from the rooftops about its oddity - going so far as to post a list of weather-related extremes to occur within one year. Perhaps the specific combination of unusual happenings was unique, but what I failed to realize that the existence of such a list in the first place is not. Our discussions of the weather have become as selective as baseball statistics "first no-hitter thrown by a left-handed pitcher with sideburns on a Tuesday in a dome stadium," and the like. I suppose that winter itself was a special case - it did set numerous records in the region - but it was hardly an end-of-days.

Intense and unusual? Sure. But large snowstorms, like most weather, are just occasional facts of life.

I'm not exempting myself from susceptibility this phenomenon. It infuriates me when I catch myself taking part, but I am as guilty as anyone. I just want to encourage everyone to think before the next time they say "Boy, this weather is really somethin', yeah?" It probably isn't. So what is the naturalist's takeaway from all my sniping? Prepare for all reasonably likely weather conditions all the time.

I won't beat a dead horse, but I do want to close on another weather-related topic. To all of those people who say "so much for global warming," every time it snows, I extend a hearty middle finger. Increased extremes in weather - in BOTH directions - are absolutely consistent with climate change. Perpetuating ignorance bothers me, so stop it.