We’re from Wisconsin. We talk about
the weather a lot. We start off conference calls by asking our coworkers in
other parts of the country or world about the weather. Frankly, I thought
everyone was as infatuated with the weather as we are. It turns out they are
not.
One of my former managers was
from California. She said she never understood why people from the Midwest
talked about the weather so much. People in southern California don’t talk
about the weather. “How’s the weather
today? It’s 72 and sunny. Just like every other day in southern California.”
What’s the point in talking about it? And then she moved to Wisconsin and the reason for all the weather talk became very clear. You never know what’s going to happen. It can be sunny and warm in the morning when you wake up and blizzard warnings can be out by the afternoon. Or tornado warnings. Or hurricane strength winds. Or wind chills below zero. You can run the heat in your car on the way to work and need to run your air conditioning on the way home from work. So the weather is always an interesting topic!
The meteorologists here earn their money. Or at least they give it their best shot.
This summer I bought a rain gauge. Somehow it made me feel very old. I’m not sure why but I have this belief that the only people who own rain gauges and are actually interested in how much rain we get are either farmers (I grew up on a farm) or old people.
The funeral home in the town I grew up in gave out rain gauges as a gift one year. So there are still people (probably old people) in my home town with little plastic gauges with the funeral home information on them.
I found my rain gauge when I was looking for something else of course. But there it was and it is decorative!! The stand has scroll work and a red glass globe and the rain gauge itself is set nicely into the scroll work.
I was a bit embarrassed to put it out in my yard but I did and it looks great with the flowers and plants surrounding it.
Of course once I had the rain gauge out, we headed into a long drought period and I had no need for it!!
Sort of like last year when we finally broke down after 20+ years and bought a new snow blower. We didn’t have a large enough snowfall to use it more than once during the season!
Makes me wonder what else we should buy to alter the state of nature! Ha ha!
But back to the rain gauge. I am now the person who can tell, with authority, how much it has rained in our neighborhood. This weekend has been completely gray and gloomy and rainy. We have already had 7 inches of rain with no end in sight.
I have to say, knowing exactly how much rain has come down is somehow more comforting to me than only knowing that it has rained steadily since Friday night!!
I’m sure I’ll keep talking about the weather no matter where I roam. Just like I keep taking pictures of sunsets and sunrises!
Keep on smiling!
