Sterling's Truths for Life #22

Explanation

If there’s anything to dislike about Kansas, it is the weather. You can experience all the seasons in the same week most weeks of the year. In the middle of fall and spring, you can frequently experience all the seasons in a single day.

I grew up about half a mile from my elementary school and walked to school every day. For about half of the school year, you had to be careful to remember your coat at the end of the day. We’d often go in the morning wearing a hat, gloves, a shirt, and a sweater, and a heavy coat. And then go home with the gloves and hat stuff in our backpack, the sweater over our shoulder or carried, and the coat tied around our waist, and still sweating in short sleeves.

Some people think that when I mean the weather here is bad I mean the Tornados. Nope. Not even a little. Tornados are not scary for most people. If you’ve seen Twister or Twisters, you should know that the average Kansan has never even seen a tornado. Most of us have been within ten miles of one by the time we reach middle age, but the damage wrought by a tornado is almost always at a single point in the cyclone itself. Last time my town was hit was over a decade ago. It destroyed 23 homes and damaged a couple dozen more. It took out one hardware store and a self-store and that was about it. You can draw a line on the map from the start to the end and see what was hit. Most tornados just chew up grass in a field since Kansas is mostly fields of grass.

If I were to talk about severe weather, I would be much more likely to talk about the lovely, ubiquitous thunderstorms. In Spring we get them every day. Some weeks, there will be a giant boom from a sudden electrical release at four in the morning every day. The stuff that is much more likely to impact all of us is flooding, hail, power outages, and straight line winds. I have had my roof peeled off by high winds, but a tornado was not involved. In winter, we get horrendous ice storms every 10 or 20 years. The worst one I remember was years ago and my house was without power for nine days. (My neighbors across the street had power out for only about three, but because the neighbors on my side of the street were lazy about tree trimming…)

And, regarding snows, well some years we don’t get much of any, just a powdering or two and other years we get five feet during the winter, though almost never more than a few inches at a time (occasionally more than a foot).

Our weather is cruel, variable, and capricious. You get used to it.

Have I mentioned fire season on the prairie? Oh, look at the time…