Weather Watch

I don’t talk about weather much or spend too much time thinking about it. I look out the window when I get up and maybe see what the temperature is going to be so I know what to wear. But a few times a year, extreme weather will get my attention.

I noticed in the past couple of weeks that there was a lot of weather talk at the post office, the grocery store, everywhere I went. Of course, people always talk about weather, i.e. complain. It's either too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry. Lately, everyone was talking about how much rain we’d had. The cover story of our local paper today were the farmers' woes of not being able to get in the third crop of hay this summer due to soggy conditions and mucky fields. Why didn't I notice this sooner? It’s true that I haven’t had to water my garden this summer and the lawn is still growing like gangbusters even in August, but I didn’t feel like the summer had been a wash out. We had good mornings with showery afternoons, or showery mornings with afternoon clearing and a lot of night showers, but I didn’t feel like life had been interrupted.

In the past few days there has been some area flooding, some of which has been serious and damaging (not in my area), and with the flooding, weathermen whipped out their statistics. We got 4.6 inches of rain in June, with normal being 3 inches. In July, there was a recorded 6.27 inches; almost 3 inches above the norm. I don’t know know what we’re at for August, but I can tell you that it’s more than normal, because I, the weather oblivious, have noticed that it’s rained a lot.

I used to be more tuned in to weather. I had to be. I worked in a bank. Have you noticed that when you walk into a bank during inclement weather, that the tellers question you about the rate of precipitation and its effect on driving conditions. “Is it still pouring out there?” “How are the roads?” Maybe that’s why I don’t pay attention to it now. After six and a half years of banking, I was weather worn.

Before banking, I worked in a small town news-dealer/stationer/bus-stop during high school. My boss always greeted his customers with, “Some weather, huh?” I loved that! It worked no matter the weather: a warm sunny day, pouring rain, a blizzard, a drought, or threat of a hurricane. I’m sure he usually got more than he bargained for as the customer spouted off all the ways the weather du jour was positively or negatively effecting their lives.

On Friday evening, rumbles of distant thunder had me looking to the sky when I saw this giant thunderhead with the top blowing off.

The sun was out over us, but somewhere up north, they were getting a whooping. Some weather, huh?