Talk About the Weather
One morning my wife asked me from the other room if it was going to rain that day, and what the high temperature was supposed to be. I responded to her as I was typing an email at my computer without skipping a beat or giving it much thought, “Sunny later today, high around 63. It’s going to start raining again tomorrow afternoon.” The exchange made me pause and reflect. I thought, “Wow, I sound like some kind of human Amazon Echo!”
I am often in tune with the current weather and the forecast for days ahead. My wife knows this about me, which is why she asks me about the forecast when she is figuring out her outfit for the workday. I suppose asking me about the day’s forecast is more personalized and entertaining than checking her own weather app. But how do I possess this trivial knowledge even though I don’t seem to put much effort or attention into acquiring it?
Upon closer scrutiny of my online behavior, however, I realize that I often check the local weather report multiple times per day. I don’t spend long periods of time on my weather app, but I do check it often. This has been my routine for so long that I don’t really think about it, much like someone might habitually and mindlessly check their Twitter feed throughout the day. I am often in and out of my weather app in less than ten or fifteen seconds.
I enjoy glancing over multi-day weather forecasts which employ sexy visualizations that display the correlation between different elements of the weather as they change over time, for example how humidity goes down and air pressure goes up as a cool front moves through.
But this got me thinking: how much of my awareness of the weather is gleaned from weather apps versus direct observation and experience? Which begs a larger question: In an age when we are so electronically engrossed in our digital lives and tethered to our electronic devices, how do we remain in touch with our natural surroundings?
I realized there are two themes at work here. First, the weather can be thought of as one big continuous story, and some of us are interested in following its narrative — whether by the season, the week, the day, or even hourly. There is no beginning or end, but the continuous plot is captivating. Second, the best technology is that which aids you in the real analog world somehow without superseding it or making you dependent on the technology in order to live your life or experience your environment. For me, following the story of weather is something I am naturally drawn to and the technology simply makes it more fun and engaging.
I have always been fascinated by the weather—not just dramatic events like thunderstorms, blizzards, tornadoes, droughts, or hurricanes—but also the typical uneventful weather that might go unnoticed on any given day because it is not calling much attention to itself. I consciously and subconsciously take note of conditions when I am outside: what kind of clouds are in the sky and which direction or how fast they are moving, how humid it is and what the air smells like, how strong the wind is blowing and from what direction, and any unusual activity by wildlife. On a given afternoon walk, for example, I might consciously register that the diffuse silvery light I see is caused by high-altitude cirrus clouds, which often indicate a pending change in the weather such as an approaching cool front.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s and 80s swampy forests of East Texas, one of my favorite parts of the day was watching the weather forecast during the local six o’clock evening news. Yes, friends, the geekery runs deep with this one. We lived remote enough that ‘local’ meant going outside of my grandmother’s mobile home trailer and physically turning the television antennae to point toward the big city of Houston, about 60 miles to the south, in order to pick up the closest TV station. Or twisting the antennae 45 degrees counter-clockwise to pick up the TV signal out of the city of Beaumont to the southeast. Because of how the television signals were broadcast, you had to align the antennae with the source to get a clearer picture. I say “clearer” because we lived far enough away from the stations that the TV picture always contained some level of static or noise, so you got it as close to clear as you could. Kids these days have no idea — the struggle was real.
I loved those daily evening weather segments. An amiable weather forecaster named Doug Johnson would deliver the weather report, complete with sequences of the weather forecast hand-drawn in black and red markers upon a large notepad which sat on an easel. He would flip over a page for each day of the week like a giant storybook or flipbook, illustrating the progression of cold fronts, rain, and the like during the coming days. With a great sense of humor, a beaming smile, and bright eyes, he would deliver the weather report with charisma and character. All of this illustrated the narrative and performative quality of weather for me at an early age. He was telling a story, and he happened to be a good storyteller.
Fast forward to now, and weather reporting has achieved the heights of big-budget spectacle. The dramatic story-telling quality of weather is capitalized upon by mainstream media such as The Weather Channel with its comprehensive branding and action movie-like presentation style, complete with reporters who broadcast live while standing unnecessarily in hurricane-force winds for cinematic effect. Weather reporting has become a highly produced, polished and dramatic cable news spectacle which includes sophisticated digital graphics and even augmented reality. It is now common to survey the aftermath of floods, storms, and forest fires via drone videos, and high-resolution satellite imagery can illustrate large-scale damage, such as the before-and-after images of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devasted the island.
As a teenager, I was obsessed with airplanes and learning how to fly, and a part of my love of flying had a lot to do with my fascination with the weather. A seminal text for every budding pilot was Robert Buck’s Weather Flying. One of the things I remember about the book was the author’s suggestion for aspiring pilots to learn how to read the weather, or more specifically, to learn how to read the clouds. You can glean a lot of information about flying conditions just from observing simple phenomena like cloud types and size, wind direction, and knowing how different terrain produces different rates of heating or cooling in the air above it. You have likely experienced this latter phenomenon while on a commercial flight: On a hot summer day at lower altitudes, the plane is likely to ‘bounce’ upward as it encounters rapidly rising hot air over cemented areas, desert, or plowed farmland, and then ‘drop’ dramatically as the plane encounters cooler, sinking air over ponds, rivers, and lakes. The changes between these two air temperature extremes can sometimes be abrupt, causing the plane to instantly drop or rise as a result. In addition to all of the technical knowledge which pilots must remember, the author encouraged the use of a sort of sixth sense about the weather. His point was that being aware of your environment and surroundings is just as important as learning all the technical jargon and procedures.
These references to the reading of and telling stories about the weather suggest that the weather has a narrative quality about it. This characteristic manifests itself within popular culture in different ways. Most of us have seen the wind depicted in old maps or architectural detailing as blowing human faces. (By the way, I discovered that people collect this kind of imagery online using categories such as “blowing wind face.”) Calendars and almanacs are graphical and textual narratives about the seasons, the latter full of details for farmers on what to expect for the coming year’s climate conditions and how it will affect their crops. A whole generation of British citizens has been lulled to sleep each night by the dreamy broadcasts of BBC’s famous Shipping Forecasts. Hurricanes and winter storms are given names just like the characters in a play. The website for the Old Farmer’s Almanac maintains a list of “weather proverbs and folklore about rain” which includes gems such as:
- Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.
- If it rains before seven, it will be clear before eleven.
- Mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry.
- With dew before midnight, the next day sure will be bright.
- A wind from the south has rain in her mouth.
There are many cultural artifacts such as these that reinforce the concept of weather as narrative and as something that can be read or depicted artistically with human characteristics.
Now I think of the weather app on my Mac or on my phone. Checking in on the weather report multiple times per day is like keeping my finger on the pulse of a perpetually unfolding story. Over time I recognize the plot twists, the characters, and how the story ebbs and flows. Maybe today things are going to be calm and uneventful. But this evening I notice some story elements building tension toward what I know is going to be some kind of dramatic episode in the morning. “Looks like the shit’s going to hit the fan around 3 a.m.,” I remember telling my wife recently. Sometimes I am surprised by unexpected plot twists, tragedy, or even humor.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the best technology will supplement our knowledge and activities and benefit us out in the real world. On a stormy spring afternoon early last year, my cell phone blew up with an emergency tornado warning telling me to take shelter immediately. For those readers who do not know, the American National Weather Service designates a “tornado watch” to mean that weather conditions are favorable for a tornado, and a “tornado warning” means a confirmed tornado is on the ground. Luckily my wife was home, and she and I gathered up our three-legged cattle dog and our two older cats and headed down into the basement (we’re lucky to have a basement!). We stayed put until the all-clear showed up on my phone. We were spared the worst, but the east side of our city of Greensboro, North Carolina was hit by the tornado. This is a great example of how, when used properly and in moderation, technology not only potentially enhances our lives but could ultimately save them.
Much like the annually repeating story of nature — such as the thrill of seeing the robins who return to build their nest on our front porch every spring or the joy of watching the maple tree leaves turn colors in the fall—the never-ending story and rhythm of weather and seasons is engrained in our biological and cultural psyche. Weather, like nature, unites us all as a backdrop of life regardless of location, sex, age, race, nationality, or socio-economic status. As of late, climate change is bringing our close relationship to weather into sharp relief.
Every location on earth has its own unique local climate patterns and weather phenomena. Learning to understand and read those conditions comes with increased awareness of and connection to a place. Being in tune with your local weather through direct observation and experience means you are fully engaged with and aware of your lived environment. Supplementing this knowledge with technology can be a rich and beneficial experience.
Me: “Hey Siri! It’s my turn to walk the dog in the morning. What time will it be daylight?”
Siri: “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.”
Well, most of the time.
