What is it about the status of the weather — current, future, or past — that intrigues, confuses, and provides us with a virtually bottomless cup of fodder from which to pull a string of small talk in almost any situation? Whether a neighboring fluffy cloud farted out a storm that sent squirrels scampering in consternation for a few minutes or the entire Eastern seaboard conspired with the winds to turn the skies as grey and fling tuna through cottage windows, there will always be some sort of meteorological phenomenon that can be utilized to further our interactions with each other (and the constant need for insurance policies of unconsciousable premiums, especially if you are prone to flying fish entering your domicile.)

The ability to use such a natural occurrence as something to jaw about to others has long been a staple of conversational science, starting from the time when homo erectus first looked out across the plains and muttered, “Shit. Ogg going to get plastered.” Upon first meeting new people, we are quick to bring up a common subject and discuss, at length, such items as rainfall, wind, temperature, and humidity, all the while feeling like we should have stayed home and watched Oprah Organizes Ohio. Despite the best efforts of our teachers in school to hammer the concepts of engaging, interesting dialogue into our thick skulls, the weather has become a quick-and-dirty tool to pull out in an effort to get some sort of rapport established and a relationship off to a start. First dates, traffic tickets, job interviews — there is simply no end to the situations that will bring out our intense, artificial interest in precipitation and why it ruined my leather deck chairs last summer.

You might very well feel uncomfortable dressed up in a suit and tie (mustard-stained wifebeaters being your preferred clothing of choice), but a few jabs concerning the recent thunderstorm that kept you up all night and sounded, “like a nuclear freight train from Hell on jungle juice“, with your fellow mourners and suddenly attending the celebration for your dead aunt isn’t so uncomfortable. We pull out the Weather Card in all sorts of uncomfortable situations, using it as both an ice breaker and a distraction from the nasty event at hand. Family gatherings, pre-makeout sessions where you’re simply stalling till it gets to the good part, weddings where you want to scream, “DON’T DO IT!!!”, and business meetings after the CEO has ripped a new hole in the fabric of space-time with his untimely utilization of burrito gas are all times in which we scramble frantically for the latest in weather and attempt to throw it out in the crowd so someone, anyone, can rescue the masses from themselves and get them hurridly back to inane chatter.

Everyone has
weather
and all
people have an opinionEveryone has weather and all people have an opinion on what state it is currently in, if any. Weather can have varied states, even between neighbours, despite the fact that George didn’t get any more goddamned hail than I got, but his tomatoes certainly look better, that bastard. What constitutes a state of “good” weather to a skier may be “horrible” to the débutante stuck in her house and blocked from exercising her wallet at the local bingo parlor — it all depends on your viewpoint. So, even though the wedding reception might have gotten rained on, you could easily have a three-hour argument with Uncle Jerry over whether or not it was a, “cool, refreshing rain” or a “soggy, bloody wet mess”. The possibilities for a good hearty brawl are nearly endless, and can only further relationships between you and your stinking, lying family members (may they rot in peace).

Different folks approach weather in different ways, often depending on their employment. Well-seasoned farmers sit around small country cafes; calloused, cracked hands cup lukewarm mugs of blackened mop water, be-seed-hatted heads nodding sincerely as their peer talks about next week’s weather report and how it will affect crop prices or the harvest. Golfers stand on front porches, their eyes scanning the horizon and looking a sign that they will be able to escape to the verdant fields of their pleasures yet again (thereby avoiding whatever list the wife has come up with), and baseball players both curse and praise the sun that allows them to play. Any change in the weather will have at least one person jumping for joy, one trying new profanity on for size, and a wide range of color in between. It is one of the few events in the world (besides an American presidential election) that can universally piss off and reward all at the same time to masses of people.

How we talk about the weather is almost as varied as when, our vocabulary and usage leaving no end to the possibilities of description and grammar when referring to what is happening outside. A “squall” is hardly definitive in its extent, and “sprinkling” clearly has a very wide range of interpretation. While a 20mph movement of air very well may be “windy” for a New Yorker, Chicagoians are stacking goose feathers outside in such weather. If you are smart, you will quickly learn to leave such generalizations as “hot” and “cold” out of your repetoire or you might face something like, “Hell, you shoulda been around for the winter of aught-four; the balls on the brass monkeys were falling like hailstones and one night even God froze solid and we had to crack open a volcano to thaw the bastard out!” Clearly, there is some discrepancies present in our terminology that not even a four-year degree can resolve and make proper enough to be 100% convincing during the five o’clock newscast.

So why is weather such an important aspect of our lives and our conversations, despite its fickle nature and hard-to-reconcile differences in opinions, attitudes, and viewpoints when discussing it? The fact is, weather is a global linker — it exists everywhere, all peoples have to contend with it, and its very nature both intrigues and flabbergasts us each on a regular basis. Despite the best efforts of so-called, “meteorologists”, the skill of predicting the weather ends up coming down to sticking your head out of doors and seeing if it comes back soaked. “My god, Betty. I do believe I was just beaned by a domestic shorthair! Time to get the kids under cover.” This places all of us into the same boat, cramped for space, dying for a sandwich, and completely unsure of the direction or speed of the ship, yet we heard that there’s at least a 50% chance that it’ll get better tomorrow. In the meantime, we shrug, nod our heads and sigh at the latest, ‘forecast’, and prepare to keep on plugging whatever it was before we got pulled away from our train of thought.

With weather, like many portions of life, an old adage seems to apply the best:

If you don’t like the weather around here, just wait a few minutes — it’ll change!