User:MrDutch

Introductions
My interest in weather and climate, and the understanding of them, stems not from one event in my life, but rather from a cumulative effect from many events. In some of them, my paradigms were shifted. In others, I was amazed at the actions of the heavens. A few forced changes in my dressing habits to keep comfortable. Many events that caused paradigm shifts occurred when I lived away from or traveled outside of the place that I have always called home, Northern California. For my first 11 years of life, I lived in the hilly regions of California. During that time (in chronological order), I lived in the counties of Mendocino, Lake, and El Dorado. There, I learned three things that I thought were universal laws of climate and weather. Number one: when it is hot, it will also be sunny, and it will be summer. Two: when it is raining or cloudy, it will always be cold, and this will be winter. Three: snow falls one day per year in the winter, and lightly at that.

Out of my Element
East

Chills

My first time out of California, a span from August 1996 to June 1997, was spent on the other side of the continent, in Clayton, New York. Reaching the region, I found the air to be thicker and harder to breath. It was also cloudy some days while the air was in that condition, yet still hot. My thoughts while adjusting to this strangeness, what I later learned to be humidity, were: “What’s doing this?,” “Can somebody take this heaviness out of the air?,” and “Wow, it can be cloudy and warm.” My paradigm shifted: summer months are warm, But only always sunny on the west coast.

November rolled around, and to my surprise and delight, snow came. More surprisingly, it kept coming the whole winter. I was in awe. To have such a rare treat back home in such abundance (2-3 feet) here was mind blowing. Fascinated, I asked an elderly local about it. He told stories of snow being so deep that tunnels had to be dug through it to get from place to place. Stunned, I was in eager anticipation of experiencing that in future years (which, for good and personal reasons never materialized).

One day that winter, unbeknownst to me, it was a snow day at school. I waited, in my California standard issue winter gear; t-shirt, jeans, hat, ski jacket, and work boots. That day, after an hour standing in what must have been zero degrees Fahrenheit or below, I realized something. The standard issue was not going to keep me warm here. Out of necessity, I got more clothes for putting on in the morning to keep me warm.

Warm and Welcome April arrived during this stay in New York. One cloudy, t-shirt-comfortable day, I was walking outside. Something amazing happened; it rained, and it did not get cold! Spellbound, I blissfully ran around barefoot in the puddles and marveled at this phenomenon, getting soaked in the processes, but not cold.

North

Cold Shock

After this adventure, my next jaunts outside California were annual road trips to Tacoma, Washington. My paradigms, thrown away when it came to the east coast due to my experiences there, were, in my mind, still true for the whole west coast. The warm-hot, sunny summer ran from May to September, always. One of these road trips took place in June. For the trip, I packed t-shirts, jeans, and my baseball cap, knowing rest assured these would be all I needed. How wrong I was, for it was still cloudy, with highs of only about 65 degrees. These conditions forced me to buy a sweatshirt, and changed my paradigms about summer and climate again. I realized that my summer “rule” is only true at home. Necessity forced a paradigm shift.

Recent Astonishment

Two recent weather events astounded me in Summer 2007. The first occurred in June in an excursion outside of California to rural southwest Pennsylvania. One day during my stay, it was about 80 degrees with partly cloudy skies. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a cold wind comes and brings a torrential cold rain for about an hour. I was dumbfounded. What could cause such a thing? The second occurred in July when I was back in California. We were experiencing 70’s and clouds or rain for a few days. I was shocked. This went against my summer rule of thumb that it was always about 95 degrees and sunny during the summer. What was that?