Ready for Cold Weather?
We had one of the warmest Novembers of all time but December brought in the cold. Now it is becoming warmer so we are facing rain/sleet/ice conditions. So much of our nightly, one – half hour, local news cast is spent on weather there is hardly time for real news like the seventeen persons at a wedding party that were killed by an attack. Oh, yes, it was a U.S. drone attack in Yemen, something that clearly rates much lower than endless speculation about the local weather.
Last weekend an elderly priest friend of ours was flying into Milwaukee on his way home and was planning of going with me to visit another more elderly priest friend. However, his religious order superiors heard on local weather news that there was going to be a major winter storm in Milwaukee Thursday, today, and told him to come straight home. There was no storm today and maybe they got it mixed up with the storm the weatherman is now predicting for over the weekend.
When I was young we woke up on cold and snowy winter mornings and if it was possible, we walked, took the bus or got a ride to school. I do not remember any days the school was closed but if there were any we probably found out about them when, and if, we got there. Now we have better ways to predict the weather and better communications and transportation and there are more days school is canceled and a greater fear of bad weather.
I guess I am sounding like an old codger who says “when I was a youngster….” But I think our passion for weather reporting and our fear of weather are signs of our culture. There are so many things to be concerned about or to fear that weather reports make us feel comfortable. It is not so much if the weatherman predictions are correct or not but by making us think we know the weather to come is soothing.
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