Weathering The Weather
We are amidst another week when dramatic, dissonant, punishing, and unusual weather occupies top headlines across the country.
These weeks seem to come with increasing frequency.
Which brings to mind a fundamental question: Why are we so interested in the weather?
We talk about it. Read about it. Complain about it. Marvel at it. Try to predict it. Try to make sense of it.
It is beautiful. It is fearsome. It is awe inspiring.
“How’s the weather?” we begin a phone call to a friend living far away. We reach for the weather as a crutch for small talk when bumping into a neighbor. We are grateful for the wealth of weather data on our phones. We look ahead, planning our activities knowing that the further in the future we go, the less reliable the forecast.
Writers turn to the weather often. It is a wonderful scene setter, plot device, and inspiration for metaphor.
“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York,” foreshadows the future Richard III in the opening lines of the Shakespeare play that tells his story.
“The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time,” writes Zora Neale Hurston of the major hurricane that propels her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day,” begins Dr. Seuss’s children’s classic The Cat in the Hat.
Dr. Seuss knew, as children learn early, that the weather can shape your day, your mood, and even your destiny.
For some, weather is a daily matter of life and death. These are invariably the world’s most vulnerable, those who lack housing or suitable protection against the elements. They can be found living in the streets and beset by substance abuse, mental illness, and the cruel vicissitudes of life. They are also the migrants and the refugees fleeing from danger and desperation. They huddle in war zones and the aftermath of natural disasters, displaced by forces far beyond their control.
There are many who must contend with the weather in their lines of work. Farmers, sailors, soldiers, and all outdoor laborers know well the feeling of a cold wind and a punishing sun.
But ultimately none of us can escape the weather and what it means for our long-term survival. It is a life-giving and life-taking phenomenon. And it is becoming more unpredictable, more extreme, and more ever present as we have warmed our climate with our short-term thinking and hubris.
We talk about weather as discrete events: a named hurricane still remembered decades later. A heat wave that broke records, a cold plunge that did the same. But it is also in the accumulation of information about weather over time, the trends, our climate, that ultimately measures the health of our planet. And we are hurting mightily in this area, which will mean more hurt from weather events to come. Once again, the most marginalized will feel the most pain and dislocation.
Over the course of human history, we have found ways to exert more control over the effects of the weather. We have invented mechanisms for storing water, building shelters, and managing food production. We can cool our immediate environments, plow snow, and harvest the sun and wind for energy.
Yet the weather itself is ultimately unmanageable. Its extremes make all too apparent the limits of our human agency. Droughts persist. Storms prove too powerful for our buildings to withstand. Rivers overflow their banks. Heat, ever more heat, throws the planet we thought we knew out of balance.
The weather is ever present. And we are dependent on it. It is a constant lesson in our necessary humility, a lesson we will be forced to learn whether we want to or not. For all the might, wisdom, strength, and innovation we as humans claim to possess, the ultimate power dynamic is one in which Mother Nature still has the upper hand.
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Weather should be a major concern for everyone. Mother Nature does not know the difference of red or blue states. Doesn't care the color of our skin or if we are republicans or democrats. Weather is the only common factor that effects everyone. This is our only planet everyone should come together and try to preserve it
And yet one of our political parties continues to scoff and the notion of global warming or climate change. As long as they can make plenty of money from oil and coal they will pretend those of us who care about our beautiful blue planet are the foolish alarmists. We work to reduce our individual carbon footprint and collectively make a bit of difference but it’s never enough.