mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
It seems like everywhere I live, the weather tries to kill me. I grew up in Florida, which is tolerable most of the year until summer rolls around, at which point it gets so hot and clammy that your glasses steam up every time you set foot outside — and if that weren’t bad enough, we also get to dodge killer hurricanes for three or four months. (Some of my earlier childhood memories involve the family crowded around the television, nervously tracking a storm’s progress on the Weather Channel, and of watching people nail plywood boards over our windows so the debris kicked up in the coming storm wouldn’t shatter them.)
Then I moved to California, where the average temperature/humidity is a semi-arid 72 degrees — pretty much ideal, if you ask me — but the price we pay for such comfort is high; instead of traditional seasons like fall and winter, we have disaster seasons: fire season, mudslide season, earthquake season — hell, there’s even a riot season (the hottest days of summer tend to bring out the worst in people). Right now it’s mudslide season, and along with the winds and rains that cause mudslides come other consequences: downed power lines, tree branches, and in this city of the ubiquitous billboard, scenes like this one, which I happened across in my neighborhood this morning:
Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman seem to think it’s funny, but I’m betting the owner of that squashed Mini isn’t laughing.
What’s the worst weather your part of the world has to offer?
Comments (36)
Comment
I live in Phoenix, AZ. Aside from the 115+ degree heat in the summer, there are also some spectacular storms during the monsoon as well as huge dust storms.
So long as I’m not outside at the time, I love watching them.
posted by Sheldon Siegel on 1-7-2008 at 7:32 am
Well, when I ws a kid, I lived with my mom in Wisconsin, we always had tornadoes about ready to bust your house in, but the worst weather phenom we had was in the summer. We lived only 20 mi away from a huge tourist town called The Wisconsin Dells and every summer we would get a swarm of F.I.Bs (F*cking Illinois Bastards) driving in. It was terrible! The roads were always clogged, no one knew how to use the speed limit, and (worst of all) you actually see people walking around in theose damn cheese hats…*shudder*.
Now I live in NY, so its a little better… you just gotta watch out for those jersey drivers….
posted by Alicia on 1-7-2008 at 7:50 am
Here outside of Philadelphia, PA, we’ve got four distinct seasons.
We have a genuine winter, though snow totals have been all over the place in the last decade. We do ocassionally get the 36″ snowfall, though single digit storms are more common. It doesn’t get crazy cold, though we so routinely get into the teens and single digits.
Spring and fall are fantatsic.
Summer can be a hellbroth of soupy humidity, where 90 degrees/90 percent humidity is not uncommon.
People seem to die during the winter (code blue! homeless folks freezing to death, dying of exposure) and the height of the summer (home-bound senior dies in rowhouse with internal air temperature of 120 or so).
posted by fixedgear on 1-7-2008 at 7:54 am
I live in Austin, TX where weather changes by the hour not the season.
less than a week ago it was 30 degrees. Today it is 65 at 6am. Saturday I wore a summer dress to work because it was 80.
we have 2 seasons, Hot as hell summer and slightly cooler.
And if it really gets wintery, below freezing and maybe ice, the whole town freaks out. (which happens for a week durning the winter… maybe)
posted by Sambo on 1-7-2008 at 8:12 am
I grew up near Fargo, ND. One Christmas, santa brought an indoor/outdoor thermometer and a video camera. So one of the many cheesy home movies from my childhood features the temperature rapidly dropping to -44F after plugging the thermometer in.
posted by Ben on 1-7-2008 at 8:22 am
I live in New Orleans, ’nuff said…
posted by Lolo on 1-7-2008 at 8:27 am
San Diego here. Not much different than LA… only no riot season!
posted by Erin on 1-7-2008 at 8:28 am
Here in Houston, we have had our mandatory three winter days, and are back to summer.
Gross.
posted by Sarah on 1-7-2008 at 9:02 am
I live in Syracuse NY, Average snowfall per year 115 inches. I am not complaining. I can drive 55 mph in a blinding snowstorm without flinching.
posted by Shannon on 1-7-2008 at 9:07 am
Hah…Atlanta drought! Blue skies, sunny, high of 68 today….and most days. (Ok, so it was 16* last week. Whatever.)
posted by Jen on 1-7-2008 at 9:17 am
Except for a somewhat regular heat wave or two in the summer, San Antonio has wonderful weather; the best being wintertime. We have cool sunny and breezy days almost all winter but there is one huge drawback–juniper pollen so thick you can see it blowing in. In Texas, juniper is called mountain cedar and close to half the people who live here are allergic to it. I’ve learned not to go to a play or the symphony during cedar season–it’s like hanging out with a crowd of barking seals. Everybody seems to be coughing, hacking, wheezing or blowing noses–not to mention rattling cough drop wrappers.
posted by Alice on 1-7-2008 at 9:22 am
Mmm…Eagle River, Alaska. It’s one degree outside now. That’s not so bad though–some winters it drops to negative twenty, but that’s on the rare side. As we’re by the ocean, it’s not nearly as bad as Fairbanks. People are crazy to live in Fairbanks. And the temperatures in Wisconsin/Minnesota/etc rival our temperatures anyway.
Feet of snow and cold weather can be dealt with. No, what I hate is the ice. In the past few years there’s been several occurances of icy weeks from hell–where the temperature climbs above 32, everything melts–and it usually rains on top of that–and then the temp drops again. I’ve missed school because of “ice days.”
posted by Courtney on 1-7-2008 at 9:33 am
i’m in dallas, so i think we all know about texas weather changes by now. i would have to say the craziest weather is in the spring when the tornadoes and hail start raining down terror on the general population (don’t plan anything outdoors in may). the other weather fun-time is in the winter when a freak ice storm comes along and coats the world, causing the entire city to have to shut down.
posted by tami on 1-7-2008 at 9:35 am
I grew up in Maine where they say we have four seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Mud Season, and Construction.
I live in Boston now, and it’s a little warmer here. The downside is that even in the Northeast where we regularly have snow, people forget how to drive during the first storm of the season - i.e. about a month ago when it took my co-workers 6 hours to go 15 miles. Hooray for public transit!
posted by Adrienne on 1-7-2008 at 9:35 am
I agree with all the Texans writing in about our lovely two-season weather. Growing up in a part of Texas that is uber-arid and actually gets snow in the winter, it was a shock moving to San Antonio with its humidity and no winter (except for the one icy week a year where all stay inside due to San Antonians’ inability to drive). And yes, the mountain cedar here affects me as well–never had allergies before moving here!
I also sympathize with Ransom. I just flew back from a weekend in California (San Jose/Stanford area) where it rained the entire weekend, making flying a complete nightmare. The weather got so bad during my layover at LAX that the plane was actually swaying back and forth as we waited for clearance to take off.
I suppose both Texas and Cali are lucky, though, in that they don’t have to really deal with feet and feet of snow . . . I suppose you choose your poison when you pick a place to live!
posted by nutmeag on 1-7-2008 at 9:40 am
I live in Nebraska, member of Tornado Alley, with hot as hell summers and cold as crap winters. The mild days of spring and fall are treated like gifts from the heavens ’round these parts.
posted by Kelly on 1-7-2008 at 9:45 am
south dakota–
freezing rain makes skating rinks of the streets
so much snow that there’s a famous (at least locally) picture of a cow that walked up a drift of snow and was standing on the roof of a barn
tornadoes that have completely leveled two towns within the past 10 years
we have two seasons: winter and road construction. winter lasts 6 months and road construction lasts 8.
posted by Shelly on 1-7-2008 at 10:04 am
Living in New England means, as a previous poster already mentioned, people somehow get snow-driving amnesia every single year. Never fails, the first big snowstorm of the winter season everyone panics, a bunch of cars end up off the side of the road, and every single road for miles is clogged with the 2 people with some sense and the rest of the panickers who ran out of places to run their cars off the road.
The worst was in late ‘02, stuck at a traffic light for hours while watching a recovery crew pull a school bus out of a ditch. Fortunately none of the kids were hurt.
posted by Katherine on 1-7-2008 at 10:10 am
I’m live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I’m not crazy, really I’m not. It’s -10 out right now, but since it was -20 last week, it doesn’t feel to bad. It will get dowmn to at least -35 before the winter is over. The summers are wonderful though! 24 hours of light!
posted by Ruth on 1-7-2008 at 10:19 am
Canada.
We’re reminiscing right now about the ice storm ten years ago, during which the army (yes, we have one) was called in to help the millions of households suffering with power outages, fallen tree damages, and impassable roads.
Oh, and it’s raining now. (Don’t freeze. Don’t freeze.)
posted by K on 1-7-2008 at 10:35 am
Colorado has some beautiful seasons and while our natural disasters aren’t as infamous as California’s, we still enjoy the occasional blizzard and avalanche, tornado, fire, and flash flood. Ever hear of the Big Thompson Canyon flood? That incident may be worthy of a mental floss blog in itself. Incidentally, the city of Boulder is located at the mouth of a canyon very much like Big Thompson.
posted by Phil on 1-7-2008 at 11:07 am
I’m from New Orleans. Lived in Orlando and different parts of TX. Now I live in Portland,OR. Our Summers are beautiful. They tend to get hot, mainly because most buildings don’t have AC so it’s hard to get out of the heat. And we do have all 4 seasons. Winter is the worse, this is where the rumor that it rains all the time in the NW comes from. The winter is dark and dreary with lots of rain. But not much snow, maybe 3 to 4 times a year. Only real threat is wind storms and earthquakes for natural disasters. Oh, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrecking havoc on innocent stand-by’s. Don’t move to the NW.
posted by ella blue on 1-7-2008 at 11:28 am
haha I saw that same billboard atop the mini yesterday. i think so cal probably has the least of weather concerns though, ransom. =) we’re pretty fortunate here - powerful winds don’t blow away buildings, rain never gets to the point where we fear crossing the river that was once the street in front of our house, we don’t have to warm up our car for half an hour to melt the ice, you get the point =).
posted by CK on 1-7-2008 at 1:00 pm
Well, greetings to you all from Salt Lake City, UT! I am a texas-born, California-raised, new Utahan. I really like Salt Lake! The weather here is tollerable- temperature gets down to around 15 F at night and up to 25 or so in the day in the winter. The snow is usually here from decmeber to April. Spring is FANTASTIC with all the trees just as proud as they can be! Summer is warm. Okay, it can be pretty hot (105 for a week!) but there are plenty of ways to keep cool! Fall is spectacular (again, because of those doggone trees) and like I said, winter is not bad. There are the occasional whiteouts, but everyone always stays in anyways. Summer storms are my favorite! The big thunderstorms roll through here and the rain can be refreshing. Nope, THE WEATHER IS GREAT. Its the DRIVERS you have to watch out for!!!
posted by Ashley on 1-7-2008 at 2:01 pm
Chattanooga, TN::
I’m not a big fan of the South. Rednecks aside, I do not care for the climate. Of course, Spring and Fall are the best, but they only last about 2 weeks. The first 2 months of summer and winter are so unpredictable you have to call the weather hotline everyday to know how to dress (we had snow on saturday and it’s 70 right now).
Summer is hot and humid. It gets hard to breathe, and I am one of the lucky ones who does not suffer from allergies. And winter gets pretty cold when it’s in full swing, usually mid-January. But maybe I’m just a big sissy.
posted by Pearl on 1-7-2008 at 3:50 pm
Ashley, you’ve got me sold on moving to Utah (if it wasn’t for the 3.2 beer)
posted by Ben on 1-7-2008 at 3:54 pm
Like the others said here in the Big-D right now its a sunny 70 degrees. Just last week we were dealing with freezing temps and a possibility of snow. Now I’m at work in a dress…The weather changed so fast every one now has a hacking cough, awesome. We also have days of 110 heat and 40-50 mph winds, which is real fun in a dress with your hair in your face! But we get somewhat of a fall here which is very nice. I grew up in Houston where it was mosquito haven. You can’t step foot outside without being robbed of all your blood. One summer in my youth I remember counting over 100 mosquito bites,and that was just on one leg!
posted by Brandi on 1-7-2008 at 4:02 pm
I live in Edmonton, Canada and here we have two seasons winter which means lows of minus 30 celsius (-22 F) and construction season. We usually have snow for about six months of the year and when it finally gets warm we have to spend most of the summer patching up the roads to get ready for another brutal winter.
posted by Ashley on 1-7-2008 at 4:13 pm
I live in central Oklahoma, and like those flossers above me from Texas, the seasons are a bit sketchy. It’s a long running (albeit unfunny) joke that Oklahoma has four seasons: Early Summer, Summer, Late Summer, and Christmastime.
I’m sitting at my desk sweltering under the automated heat system, which is supposed to be programmable but apparently isn’t. It’s a balmy 76 outside, and a humid 82 inside. Gross.
There are quite a few weird weather phenomena here though. Lots of wind and tornados in the Summer–that’s the actual summer, not Late or Early. The fastest wind speeds ever recorded were in a tornado in Oklahoma: 314 mph!Lightening storms are pretty common here, as well as torrential rain. Occasionally it snows, but it rarely sticks and sleet is way more likely to come pummeling down by the bucketful. Ooooh, and hail! Hail, the golf-ball sized missiles of mass destruction.
Gotta love it though, it’s an adventure to say the least.
posted by adrienne on 1-7-2008 at 4:33 pm
I hadn’t realized that the summer humidity in New Jersey was so bad until I spent a week in a LA a couple of summers ago. When I walked out of Newark Airport on my return it was like being hit in the face with a wet towel.
posted by Liz on 1-7-2008 at 4:36 pm
Another Texican here…the Central Texas area is also subjected to flooding when a weather system sits over us for a few days…because we are mostly a rocky soil, there’s no where for the water to go once the rivers fill up…its weird to think our natural disaster is ‘flooding’ but it is…
Californians pay a LOT to live in the land of mudslides, forest fires, earthquakes…I don’t envy you guys at ALL, even WITH our humidity at 90% most days…good luck with that weather out there…
posted by donner on 1-7-2008 at 4:36 pm
I live in Sunny South Dakota (it was actually nicknamed “The Sunshine State” until just a few years ago.) It’s not as bad a picture as Shelly (above) painted; actually, I don’t complain much about the weather here because I like having four distinct seasons. You mentioned the average temp of 75 in your area, so just for giggles I checked to see what ours is; 45.5 degrees F. I would’ve thought it was a bit higher than that.
Here we have the best(?) of both extremes, hot and cold, but generally only for a short time in the summer & winter months. The rest of the time it’s actually quite tolerable. We get a bad rap for the cold winter months, but that works wonders to keep out the riffraff. So, yeah; South Dakota weather is terrible. Simply terrible. Nobody would ever want to put up with what we get. Ever.
posted by Dave on 1-7-2008 at 5:46 pm
Well, I live in California,in Northern California, 60 miles from Oregon. Here, at 3,500 ft, it is four sold seasons, with snow (we got about 44″ in the past four days), rain (our basement has flooded a few times since we’ve been here), it’s no Death Valley, but it gets around 90°, and the fall is always a brisk time. The worst being the snow.
posted by Emily on 1-7-2008 at 9:40 pm
Greetings from predictably unpredictable southeast Michigan (Detroit). Despite the extraordinarily bad economic hardships, this has to be one of the best places to live when it comes to Mother Nature. Hardly ever a natural disaster. Maybe one random tornado a year. If it does flood we only call it that because we don’t know what else to call 2 inches of water in the basement. We have all 4 seasons (sometimes in the same week). Cold yet tolerable winters. Hot but manageable summers. The worst part is that you can never prepare for anything properly because the weather is so unpredictable. It can be 75 degrees and sunny in the morning, and by the evening, 25 and snowing, then back to 50 the next day. Gotta love it!
posted by Phunk on 1-8-2008 at 9:39 am
donner, not all of california is prone to mudslides and forest fires. earthquakes perhaps but most are minor, kind of fun actually. i used to live in the midwest and i will never live there again. i hate the humidity and i hate how humidity brings bugs. i use to get so many mosquito bites that i could play connect the dots with them.
posted by CK on 1-8-2008 at 3:33 pm
When it’s 115 degrees in LA in the summer, I tell people it’s the price we have to pay for not having snow.
By far, the worst weather is Minnesota.
Blizzards in the winter, sweltering humidity in the summer, (and mosquitos!)
Plus tornados and flooding! Why bother?
posted by chieromancer on 6-2-2008 at 9:45 pm