Let's Outlaw the Weather

Weather forecasts are a good thing. From them we learn if we will be needing our umbrellas, ice scrapers, or sun glasses. Like so many good things, however, weather forecasts can turn into too much of a good thing (and too much of a not-all-that-great thing, as well).

While it is extremely helpful to be prepared for all that snow that is headed our way, it isn't always the best thing to start worrying about it ten days before it arrives. Also, it is not necessarily the most positive thing to bellyache about from the time we hear about it until the time it arrives. We even rehash old weather. A few weeks ago my local station actually did a whole, big, retrospective on The Blizzard of '78!

Regardless of how little time I have at any given time, I will always find time to watch or listen to weather forecasts. I have weather on my PC's desktop and weather on the home pages of my of my Internet accounts. Not only do I keep tabs on the weather for my zip code, but I get personalized weather reports for all zip codes that are frequented by anyone close to me. I tried to have weather on my cell phone, but it turns out the super-mini phone won't accommodate certain weather subscriptions (but since I have email on my phone I can get weather on the phone if I want/need it). All this keeping tabs on the weather isn't enough for me. I have also appointed myself weather reporter for everyone I know. I've also bookmarked my local television news' weather page, so I can read what I've always heard several times over the last several days.

Without clicking on anything I get to see what the weather is outside my window (then again, I could look out any of my many windows, open any door, or look at the thermometer that hangs near the back porch). (So, okay, maybe the weather on the desktop could go.) If I click on "ten-day forecast," however, I get to see what the weather MIGHT be over the next ten days. I am - to say the least - on top of the weather!

What I'm not on top of, however, is not allowing the weather to ruin more days than it needs to ruin. Neither am I on top of remembering that, even though weather forecasters, themselves, will say the forecast may change, forecasts change. Oh sure, when I hear about a hurricane that appears to be heading up the East coast I tell myself that hurricanes usually diminish in strength before they get to New England (where I live). What I can't stop myself from doing, though, is letting words like, "snow," or "record heat," eat away at my mood, from the first time they're mentioned until the day of their expected arrival (at which time they may or may not actually arrive).

I live in New England, where people joke about how the weather changes. Maybe I am suffering the effects of the psychologically abusive, New England, weather, which promises Spring for two days and then tosses us all into the dead of Winter for three bloody weeks. Even with Doppler Radar, Storm Cast This, and Weather Eye That, I understand that it is difficult for weather forecasters to always have a grip on what's coming. Here's how it goes, though: Seven or nine days ahead of time weather forecasters will begin talking about "a Winter storm barreling across the country". Multiple spin-outs and a death or two have occurred in a state like Utah. This "monster storm" is headed toward Ohio "and will eventually effect us". It doesn't have to be a Winter storm. It can be record heat, torrential downpours, wind chill factors, or dangerous wind gusts.

More than week before any weather gets to New England the seed is planted in my head that I should start worrying about it. Not only that, but I should start planning to complain about it. In fact, why not start complaining about it immediately? Looming over my otherwise positive thinking is the idea that I need to prepare for The Next Big Weather.
That can mean get out and enjoy the outdoors today and tomorrow, because I can stay in and do housework on Weather Day. It can mean wash all the floors, because, for some reason, I need freshly clean floors when snow or record heat arrive (not so clean floors work well with torrential downpours). It can mean digging out or washing one type of clothing or another or making sure the sleeveless tops are clean for when that 95-degree/humid heat wave hits. It can mean any number of little awarenesses of upcoming weather (and for the most part, New England weather is rarely that perfect 65-degree day with just the right amount of breeze and sun).

Once any seed of any looming weather is planted (and often there are several seeds planted, all of which contribute to any number of mentally confusing activity-planning stresses) I have my "mental alert" on (and blood pressure up), waiting for yet more word on any weather changes. Whether the issue is one of the hundreds of hurricanes that get started in the Caribbean and don't usually make it way up here to New England; or one of those avalanche-producing record snowfalls that don't hit New York until after temperatures turn them to rain, I keep close track on all looming weather. In my head I know we may end up with three inches of snow and some slush or a gray day with a lot of wind, but my heart keeps telling me to stay on top of what is happening. Some places have been known to get five feet of snow. True, I've never experienced that here, but it could happen. Besides, six inches of snow is pretty darned depressing for me.

Weather forecasters do an opposite version of the gloom-and-doom reporting too. There will be days of talk about how it will be 60 beautiful degrees next Wednesday and Thursday. I get my hopes up. 60 beautiful degrees? I love 60 degrees. Maybe I won't have to kill myself after all. All I have to do is think about those 60 beautiful degrees that are coming next Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday and Thursday will days when I can finally know what happiness is!

In reality, Monday arrives and the ice storm they promised would be over by noon runs on through the afternoon. Monday night it turns 18 very ugly degrees, and it isn't much better Tuesday until about 2:00 p.m, when it gets to be 43. Weather forecasters keep telling us, though, that 60 beautiful degrees are coming as soon as that warm front moves in. I hang onto the promise of 60 degrees all through the 40-degree Tuesday and the 29-degree overnight.
Wednesday morning I am anxious to run to the door and feel those 60 beautiful degrees for myself. I throw open the door, and there it is - 44 raw degrees. (Huh? Huh? What? What the..?) I wait all through Wednesday, still believing that 60 beautiful degrees will show up. Radio weather reports talk about how it is 50 sort-of-ok degrees in the southern part of the state. Television's evening weather report says the same. For some reason, I'm not hearing anyone say anything like, "Even though we said it would be 60 degrees today and tomorrow it turns out it will not be." Can't someone even just acknowledge all my pain?! Where are the 60 degrees they promised?! Can somebody PLEASE just tell me what happened to the 60 beautiful degrees?!!

Thursday arrives, and it, too, is in the 50's. My computer weather tells me, "feels like 18 below zero because of all that horrible, chilling, wind and dampness"). The eleven p.m. weather forecast predicts that it will be 45 damp degrees on Friday and lets us know that Weather Eye Five Zillion will be watching the development of that storm that just hit Australia, will be hitting the North Pole next week, and may affect us - depending, of course, on whether it comes directly across Canada, swoops out into some ocean first, or heads down the California coast, scoots past Arizona and Tennessee, loses power over the Gulf of Mexico, and then ravages the Dominican Republic for it heads to Boston.

Either weather should be outlawed, or there needs to be a law requiring television, radio, and Internet weather sources to provide prescription medications to all viewers, listeners, and subscribers. Cell phones with weather on them should have built-in, automatic, blasts of nitrous oxide coming from the key pad when users access weather services.

As I am battered by this New England weather, and taunted by the promises of better things to come, I tell myself that I must find the sunshine within my heart. You know what, though? After one has been tortured by New England weather (and it's forecasters) for long enough it can be pretty hard to find a shred of sunshine left in one's heart!

Spring is coming. That much I know for sure. It will last for about three weeks, and for that three weeks I will finally and briefly experience happiness once again.