“Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.”
—Kin Hubbard, US journalist, humorist
Simply put, weather is what’s going on in the atmosphere in any one location at a particular time. Understanding weather allows us to plan our day, our vacations, and our crops. And it’s a handy conversation starter.
In fact, weather is a complex and dynamic process driven by the Sun; the earth’s oceans, rotation, and inclination; and so many other factors that many of its mysteries still remain unexplained. Being prepared for what the weather brings can be as simple as turning on the TV to catch the latest forecast before heading for the beach, or as complicated as examining long-range forecasts to decide which crops to plant. Weather constantly affects people in small ways, but weather can also have major consequences when hurricanes or tornadoes threaten their well-being and livelihoods, or even their lives.
The weather can even affect your health, especially during extremes in temperature or precipitation. If you’re not dressed properly in cold weather, you can fall victim to hypothermia, which occurs when the body’s core temperature drops below the point where things function normally. The flip side of hypothermia is hyperthermia, where the body’s core temperature rises too high. Hyperthermia can cause heat exhaustion or even heat stroke, which can be fatal.
During the summer, a stuffy nose and postnasal drip may have you convinced you’re suffering from a cold. But the same symptoms may be due to allergies. Remember that colds last an average of three to seven days, while allergic reactions can go on for ten days to several weeks. If you’re still miserable after a week, chances are you’ve got allergies.
Weather can also affect your health in less obvious ways. Long spells of gray winter weather can lead to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a malady that causes depression and a debilitating lack of energy; it’s thought to be caused by lower light levels during the winter as the days become shorter and the Sun rises lower in the sky. Many arthritis sufferers complain of worsening symptoms when atmospheric pressure falls, and there is a statistical rise in the number of heart attacks after abrupt weather changes such as passing storm fronts.
On a larger scale, weather plays a big role in the economic health of every nation on Earth. A timely soaking rain can rescue a crop from ruin, while a sudden torrential cloudburst can wash it away. And farmers aren’t the only ones at risk; those who depend on natural gas for heat often watch in dismay as a particularly cold winter sends prices skyward. Hurricanes can drive tourists away from areas that depend on a regular influx of visitors for their livelihoods. Even a gentle phenomenon like fog can result in disaster, as the captains of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm learned one fateful July night in 1956. And during the Dust Bowl of 1936, one of the hottest and driest summers ever recorded, more than 15,000 people died of malnutrition and dust-related diseases.
Scientists look for evidence of ancient hurricanes in a branch of science called paleotempestology. Evidence of past storms can be found in coral skeletons, sediments from the ocean bottom, and even in caves, where stalactites retain the chemical signatures of abrupt cloudbursts caused by tropical cyclones.
With a growing realization of the weather’s importance and so much weather news readily available on TV and the Internet, it’s no wonder that interest in the subject is soaring. It seems that almost every day a weather disaster is happening somewhere in the world. Yet it’s important to remember that extreme weather events, from droughts to hurricanes, have been happening for millennia, long before there were cameras to record them or buildings and people to get in their way.
One of the reasons weather is so compelling is because it is universal: snow falls just as heavily on poor neighborhoods as it does in well-to-do suburbs, and a flash flood can destroy both mansions and shacks with equal force. Weather is the one thing everyone has in common.