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July 06, 2010

How's the weather?

It's a funny thing. All of my friends from Ontario are always complaining about the weather.

Right now, it's oppressively hot there.

It's always too hot or too cold or too wet or too snowy or too thunderstormy or too earthquakey (which I know isn't the weather, but it's part of the whole "too-whatever" mindset). I never have to look at the Eastern Ontario weather report because fifty or more of my friends have already informed me through their facebook status updates. My facebook feed fills up with these complaints.

It's worse than Farmville! At least now I can block Farmville!!

You'd think that, of anyone, it would be my northern friends (from the Yukon right across to Nunavut) that would complain about the weather. After all, we live in a barren wasteland permanently covered in snow and ice.1

*cough* *cough*

But I almost never hear complaints about the weather from my northern friends. Instead, when the topic is raised, weather is spoken of with glee or, dare I say, reverence.

Some examples?

"I love these beautiful, long, hot, summer days!"

"I just got back from a walk. It's freezing cold out but the sky is so clear!"

"It's snowing! Yippee!!!"

"Raining again. Good for stopping those forest fires."

So what is it? Why the difference? Is it the humidity?  It our northern weather just plain better? Is it something about our expectations?  Is it something engrained in the northern mentality? Something engrained in the southern mentality?

Please, someone, help me to understand.

1A common - but erroneous - stereotype that many people (including friends of mine) have.  This stereotype is usually shattered when they come to visit.

10 comments:

Fawn said...

Maybe it's just the kind of friends you attract, you nut. Lots of MY Whitehorse Facebook friends complain about the weather. :) They always seem to forget about the beautiful weather we've already had.

Suzanne said...

you can block farmville? how?

Meandering Michael said...

If someone sends you a farmville (or other application request), look for the tiny text that says "block this application".

If it's showing up in your feed and you don't want to see it, move your mouse cursor near the top right of the farmville crap (just under the far-right-hand-side of that faint line) until a "hide" button appears. Click that button and then click "hide (application name here)".

dogsled_stacie said...

Yeah, I'm pretty much a weather complainer myself. I don't really recall this "beautiful weather" which Fawn mentions! I've only seen wind, clouds and more wind. Oh and sunny days back in May! That said, I make it up for appreciating all the snow Mother Nature can throw our way in the winter!

Still, I want to see days of +25 and NO wind. But if it hits +40 I'll still be complaining...haha!

Sue said...

Complaining about the weather gives us a break from complaining about traffic jams on the 417, rush hour traffic, government, etc.

Still, it is awfully hot here this week! I went out at 7:30AM this morning to water my flowers. I decided to take a picture of my lilies and immediately upon bringing my camera outside the lens fogged up from the humidity.

But, who is complaining? :-)

Scientific Chick said...

Complaining about the weather is pretty much a national sport. I know only a handful of Yukoners but they do complain about the weather. What's going on here seems like a mix of confirmation bias, availability bias and expectancy bias. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RsbmjNLQkc

Anonymous said...

We've had fantastic weather out here in my neck of the woods. Nice and sunny during the day with a nice breeze to keep the bugs down... and of course the cooler nights which make it ever so nice to sleep in! Mind you, we did have one day of just rain (only one since I got out of school - can't complain there!) and a couple of threatening clouds above ... but other than that, it's been great summer weather!

I just dread heading down East where it's +36 / +42 with humidex ...

Meandering Michael said...

Look, Kennie! While you're in the north, you have good things to say about the weather! But now that you're going south/east you dread the weather! So strange!

SC, that song was great, but I'm biased.

Dog Hair in my Coffee said...

Believe it or not, I have been pondering this question, and the answer, since you posted it. It seems like quite the conundrum. It SEEMS like people in the far north would complain MORE about weather, but then, my thinking ran along the lines of, perhaps people there don't DARE complain about the weather, because then they would be branded, labeled, as unworthy, not tough enough to live there, ungrateful, or any number of other unsavory terms (wuss comes to mind, but I didn't know if I could say that on a family blog...). On the other hand, (and I throw myself in with the Eastern Ontario folk, since wny is directly below them, and we have been getting the same god-awful heatwave weather), I think perhaps the reason WE complain is because our weather is never the same two days or weeks in a row. We never know what we're going to get. Last week, I was literally freezing my toes off, wrapped up in sweatshirts and jeans and thinking, THIS is summer? Come on. Now, this past week, I have been so hot I couldn't breathe without breaking a sweat. It makes me wonder - what's next? Will there be icicles hanging off my eaves? An earthquake? (Oh, wait, we just had one of THOSE a couple weeks ago, too) If the weather could just make up it's mind, and pick a happy medium we could count on, for, say, "summer weather," perhaps we'd all stop TALKING about it! Probably not though. I think we might just be bored because WE don't live in such an awesome place as you northerners. Or, maybe we're just a bunch of whiners. Good question, good food for thought, though. Today, it's cool enough to actually ponder it some more!

Meandering Michael said...

We get some weather swings, too, but they're definitely more comfortable than yours (It's the humidity that makes the difference).

You might be on to that something with that whining wuss train of thought, though!