thundersnow and freezing fog
I’m sure you’ll forgive me if, every spring, i refuse to turn even one cartwheel. But I know how this works. Sure, after a relentless winter, we can now enjoy those special two or three weeks before it becomes too hot and humid. Seriously, this was turning into the mythical Winter With No End. And after ten or so winters here, I’m finally starting to realize something very profound–crappy weather sucks.
But what we have in Minnesota is a kind of collective amnesia, a shared mental illness that allows us to conveniently forget, every year, that the weather will turn to shit, every year. Yet we stay, walking around muttering things like “great theater…vibrant music scene” to convince ourselves that it’s actually a good idea to live in a place where on some days, you have to cover your mouth so that you breathe in air that might freeze your lungs!
I lived in Minneapolis for several years in the 80’s and distinctly remember telling my California friends how great it was to live where there’s a change of seasons. And of course, my friends in L.A. would call to give me grief every winter, asking me “How cold is it now?” and “Are you freezing yet?”–as if we don’t have ‘indoors’ here, like there are no cities, simply bands of nomads exposed to the elements. Of course, my snarky vengeance would come every fall, when I would call and ask “Is your shit on fire yet?” or in February when I could ask “Has your house slid down the hill yet?”
Now that I have the wisdom that comes with middle-age, I think I’m less fond of Old Man Winter than I had been when I was a bit more…spry. Last night, we got 6 inches of new snow. I’m looking out my window as I write this, and it’s quite lovely–if I didn’t have to actually WALK OUTSIDE. But take it from a guy with a limp and a cane–one man’s glistening city sidewalk is another man’s treacherous path to the bus stop. Winter wonderland my ass–as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a lot of places where I can slip and crack my skull on the curb.
I try not to bitch about the weather here, but today is one of those ridiculous days. This afternoon, the high temperature will be 15 degrees. Spring training has started, fer chrissake! I really don’t understand how the midwest was even settled. Let’s say the westbound pioneers got here in…June. Beautiful skies over the endless plains, frolicking in the lakes. But a few months later in that first year, when it became butt-fucking cold (an actual meteorological term)…PACK UP AND KEEP GOING WEST! OR HERE’S AN IDEA–GO SOUTH! But don’t just…stay where you are. It’s not like the first Minnesotans were tied to mortgages and school districts–get in the wagon and find someplace warmer! Load up your wagons and take your ad hoc city somewhere else! Some place where a suffocating blanket of cold and ice doesn’t bury you for four months!
And TV weather people don’t help. They seem to perversely relish these ‘weather events.’ I want to hear the anchorman say “Here’s Dave with the live Doppler forecast to tell us what to expect” and have Dave say “Screw that–everybody get out of here! Evil Winter’s coming with her mighty arsenal of cold and ice!” Last night they predicted ‘thundersnow.’ C’mon–that doesn’t even sound real. In Oregon I saw a forecast of ‘freezing fog’. I was pretty sure that was just Portland’s Chamber of Commerce trying to frighten people out of moving there–let’s take TWO shitty weather conditions and pretend they’ve joined forces! And wind chill–is this concept even necessary? Do I need to be reminded that not only is it too cold to be outside, but that it ‘feels’ even colder than it is?
And then there’s my favorite meteorological phrase–‘a wintry mix.’ Now there’s descriptive, verifiable hard science for you. Anyway, I realized a long time ago that weather forecasting is actually just pseudo-science, like astrology, or phrenology. Think about it–when the weatherman says there’s a fifty percent chance of snow, isn’t that basically saying it might snow, or it might not? That’s going out on an empirical limb!
I’ve lived in a lot of cities, and I will say I’ll take cold weather over hurricanes or earthquakes. When I left L.A. after the Northridge quake, people would say “but every place can have disasters.” True enough, but with every other natural disaster get at least some warning. If you’re in Florida and the guy on your teevee says you should leave your home–you usually have the option of LEAVING YOUR HOME. If you live next to a river and it’s rained real hard for real long time, then during that real long time you could FIND HIGHER GROUND. Even tornadoes–if you can’t get to a basement, you at least have a couple minutes after the siren sounds to…I dunno–pray.
But not earthquakes. Not only can they not be predicted (we have the technology to go to freakin’ Mars but we can’t predict when our own planet might break into pieces like peanut brittle?–priorities, scientists?) but when one hits, you have no idea if it’s gonna be a few seconds of gentle rolling or THE CATACLYSMIC RUPTURE THAT SENDS US ALL PLUNGING INTO THE OPEN MAW OF AN ANGRY EARTH!
So, I suppose I can deal with cold, but I gotta admit, if some opportunity presented itself in say, Austin Texas, I might take it. It might be a hundred degrees for a few months, but you don’t have shovel heat.