I seem to be weather blind. Perhaps it’s because I had lived in Florida for eight years. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Seattle where you just don’t expect it to ever be nice. But when it comes to weather, I’m a bit well, agnostic.
While everyone around me seems to talk about the weather, I rarely notice it. Sure, when I was in Seattle I would bitch about 10 straight days of rain, but not because of the rain itself, but because of the poor driving skills all Puget Soundians seem to possess when the rain inevitably starts to fall, then collect on the side of the road, then pool out onto the road.
In Florida, this is a regular occurrence. The rains here are tropical in nature. When it rains, it pours, literally. Rain isn’t measured in Florida by the hours it falls but by the inches. As such, the roads fill up pretty quickly with water. People seem to be pretty used to a flooded road now and then there. Of course, they are also used to hurricanes.
If you’re a native of Seattle and really want to see rain, come to Florida in the summer. Unknown to tourists and a well kept secret of the tourism bureau, summer is the rainy season. It’s also hurricane season.
Hurricane season starts June 1 and ends November 30. That’s right, for six months a big blow can roll in at any time and seriously disrupt your days. Yes, days. There is the pre-hurricane period, when you have to vaguely keep watch of its path, there are the hurricane days, when it’s close enough to affect your plans, there’s the “man, it’s here” days, when the wind blows hard, rain goes sideways and your neighbor’s cat flies by your window along with most of his home, and then the post-hurricane period, when you live without any power in the sweltering summer heat of Florida.
I have been through four hurricanes here. All of them in 2004. They aren’t really a big deal for the most part, but I never had to endure anything over a Cat 2 because I happened to be inland. Once a hurricane hits land, it peters out pretty quickly. It’s not at all like you see on the Weather Channel, unless you’re out on the coast where I was until recently.
Though I have only been through a few hurricanes, let me tell you that nothing is more miserable. It’s not the “man, it’s here” days. Frankly, everyone just drinks a lot and gets away from windows. No, it’s the post-period. Nothing is worse than sweltering in an apartment or home here that doesn’t have AC.
Yes, I have been in a power outage in Seattle during the dead of winter. I managed to warm myself with a wood fireplace and even resorting to standing around the barbecue outside. I have worn so many layers of clothes that I looked like the kid in A Christmas Story who couldn’t put his arms down.
But in the tropics, when the AC goes out, there’s not much you can do. Ice would be nice, but it melts away without power. And there’s only so many levels of naked you can get trying to cool down. A breeze would be nice, but the hurricane takes that with it, so it’s dead calm for a week. Sweltering, dead calm.
My friends, of course, think this is all paradise down there. They think I’m nuts for leaving it. But again, I happen to be a bit weather blind.
When I was in Seattle over the past six months. It rained, sometimes for days. It even snowed seven bloody inches when I arrived there the one day, sans a decent winter coat, gloves or snow boots. I just sucked it up, shivered a bit, thought I should maybe think about buying gloves sometime (I didn’t), and sloshed over to the mini mart by my hotel to get some beer and watch Jeff Renner tell me how the world was coming to an end because there was some snow on the ground.
Then, as usual, the power went out a few times, the snow continued to fall long past the day when they thought it would stop, an ice storm followed it and as we all know, slush is far worse to drive in than packed snow, so the roads were pretty dicey for the next two days, at least where I was.
And then, a magical thing happened. It happens in Florida, too, with far more frequency as you might guess. The sun came out. It was gorgeous, cold, but gorgeous.
I suddenly realized why I never appreciated a sunny day in Florida. It’s the expectation. Instead of thanking God for parting the skies for what Seattle weather forecasters call “Sun Breaks,” Floridians grumble that their plans got washed out because of rain, during the rainy season. As such, they’re forced to hole up in their air conditioned homes until the world rights itself once again and the expected weather returns.
Being rusty not tan, I never really cared. Still don’t. More often than not, particularly during the summer, it was too hot to go out on a sunny day in Florida. The humidity can suck the breath right out of you. And a hot, sunny day where I lived meant a night of no-see-ums and mosquitoes, so even when the sun goes down and the temperature dips, you can’t enjoy it unless you are lathered in Ode de Off to keep from itching all night.
Now, I’m not saying that the cold, damp, gray Seattle skies are better or worse than the hot, sweltering, sunny skies of Florida. To each his own. I guess I just don’t really care either way for I am one of the few, the proud, the agnostic. At least when it comes to the weather.
In the Emerald City, where there’s an 80% chance of gray today,
– Robb