When I was a kid, I used to get a kick out of listening to some of the expressions some of the older folks would say. For instance, whenever dark clouds appeared on the horizon, they’d always say, “Looks like we’re gonna have weather.”
Sunny skies apparently didn’t count as weather. Only storms or unusual occurrences were considered weather.
Well, unless you’ve lived under a rock for the last few weeks, you know we’ve had a lot of weather lately. In fact, we’ve had so much “weather” that if you lived under a rock, the rock is probably under water.
It seems like it has rained almost every day since the first of the year. In fact, a friend joked that he was happy it had only rained twice this winter.
“Twice?” I asked incredulously.
“Yep. Once for 35 days straight, then again for 20 days.”
Indeed.
As I write this, we’ve had a few nice days. But the rain is coming back later today. It has rained so much, I’m beginning to mildew. And since it’s winter, it’s a cold rain. With fog. And thunder. Yes, thunder. I was awakened the other night as a thunderstorm rolled through. In February.
It’s not just in Georgia where the weather is wacky. The Northeast gets hit every other day by a major snowstorm. There were tornadoes in Alabama last week. Nashville has flooding. And they had a snowstorm in the deserts of New Mexico last week.
Scientists will blame global warming or holes in the ozone or some other phenomenon that I don’t really understand. Certainly, there’s plenty of evidence that our climates are changing. But I think there might be another reason.
When I worked at the Early County News, my hometown weekly newspaper, as a college student, I would take the pages to the newspaper in Bainbridge where it was printed. Then I would bring the finished product back to a warehouse on the edge of town where a friend and I would hand insert the sales circulars and get the papers ready to be delivered.
I would be back with the papers around 9 a.m. By 9:30, the man, who lived next door and who apparently wanted to be the first person to see the newspaper, would show up at the warehouse with a quarter to buy a copy.
One morning, after we had some bad thunderstorms roll through the night before, he walked up and immediately began talking about the storms.
“That was some weather last night,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” I replied. “Kept me awake.”
“You know why we get weather like that, don’t you, son?”
I was a college student, and an intelligent one at that. I knew all about cool, dry air masses overrunning warm, moist air. I suspected this wasn’t what he meant, though. And it wasn’t.
“It’s all them rockets we keep launching,” he said. “We keep shooting more of them up and poking more holes in the atmosphere. Ain’t nothing good coming from that.”
He was quite serious. After he finished teaching me about why the weather was so crazy, he handed me a quarter, took his paper and went home.
It does seem that the weather has gotten considerably crazier since those days, though. Maybe the man was on to something. Perhaps it’s for the best that we aren’t launching any more space shuttles.
Whatever the reason, I’ve had enough weather.
