Spring just called and left a message.
It wants its moderate weather back.
Me too. Where did spring go? It seems like it just arrived and now everyone is driving around with the windows up and the air conditioning on.
Shut in becomes the norm once more. We’re shut in during the winter and summer for reasons of cold and heat, respectively. Autumn is my favorite time of the year, but like spring, is over much too quickly—usually. The last few winters, though, it seems like fall extends into much of the winter season, in that it’s not so “wintery” during winter, anymore. I’ve got parkas that barely get service and then, before long, it’s spring, which brings sneezes and blooms in simultaneous abundance, yielding all too soon to baking, hot summer.
I believe weather patterns are cyclical. Some weather experts may argue global warming is responsible, but I tend to stray toward the cyclical explanation. Historical weather patterns are not actually considered much anymore these days by most people who aren’t farmers (most of us), and who opt for the expertise of their local meteorologists instead. If you’re old enough to remember the “Farmers’ Almanac,” however, you probably recall seasons being more distinct in duration and feel, as you read the almanac’s weather predictions. This gem of weather forecasting is still published, but its reader numbers have declined steadily over the years as Doppler radar et al came into vogue as modern era forecasting tools.
So now that you’re groaning you didn’t come here to read about the weather, let me segue to what the weather and its forecasting can signify for many of us beyond the obvious.
In a society that regularly displays loud and clear our need for being in control, we can share in the fact that the weather is very much beyond our control.
Pretty deep, I know, but the thing is, that sentiment is beautiful in its simplicity.
Things get complicated; we lose control and things can turn ugly when this happens sometimes. Yet, no one gets angry at the clouds when the weather blows up their day or the event they’re attending by inconveniencing them with rain or snow, when they absolutely, positively had to have sunny, clear, or mostly sunny and clear skies.
If anything, we blame someone for the poor weather.
“How does that weather dude keep his job when he’s wrong so much of the time?”
Weather folks get a rough shake sometimes, but they’re much better than when I was a kid and looking at the Farmers’ Almanac was about as good as getting someone’s long range forecast on TV.
For another example of misplaced anger, how about upon lightning and rain suddenly raging during a mid-afternoon celebration, we’re compelled to beat up poor Marge:
“Great choice to have an outdoor swimming pool birthday party for little Johnny, Marge!”
This is pretty ridiculous as the weather is going to do, well, what the weather is going to do.
Marge isn’t responsible. The weather guy isn’t to blame, either.
But since we can’t control the weather, many of us are compelled to lash out at someone about it, when it all goes south on us.
They think it’s like work or something and “someone must pay” when something goes amiss or a project sours.
The weather is the great equalizer when it comes to modern times.
With so many more things seemingly within our control than ever, isn’t it comforting to know the weather can sneak all up on you and rain down hard on your behind, leaving you running for shelter?
I don’t know about you, but that’s very calming for me. I like walking in the rain without an umbrella, too, though. I’m funny like that.
It’s all like a good feeling of helplessness for me, if there is such a thing.
If you can’t surrender to the weather and how it occasionally inconveniences you, I would ask that you consider making weather, instead of people, the target of any displeasure you may think of directing.
But good luck with that. Like father time, weather is indifferent to the protestations of humans.
So if you can’t beat ‘em, in this case, gleefully join ‘em. Hopefully, at the worst for it, you’re just a little wet behind the ears from a gentle spring rain.
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