The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Local News

March 21, 2007

Mike Pound: Weather has a sick sense of humor

By Mike Pound

Globe columnist

Spring is here, which means it’s time for a snowstorm.

I hope you’ll forgive my springtime cynicism, but I don’t trust our weather. I have mentioned before that our weather sort of has a mean streak, so snowing right around springtime is something that our weather would think is funny. Our weather has a sick sense of humor.

See, right now our weather pretty much has people convinced that warm weather is here to stay. It’s possible that our weather might let it get up to 80 degrees this weekend. That’s right, 80 degrees in March. Our weather likes to convince people that it’s time to put the sweat shirts and sweat pants away and pull out the shorts. By the way, is it just me or are there some people who might want to wait a little longer before pulling out the shorts — at least in public?

I don’t mean to be unkind here, but there is nothing whiter than the legs of premature springtime shorts wearers. And let’s be honest, it’s not an attractive white. If it was, the folks who come up with household paint colors like “gutted teal” or “Bush administration gray” would have something called “early shorts white.” But they don’t, so it’s not.

I think the premature shorts wearers actually help push our weather to mess with us. I don’t think our weather minds if people get spring fever and start planting flowers, taking walks and opening windows. I think our weather is OK with that. But I don’t think our weather likes premature shorts wearers. I think premature shorts wearers make our weather say: “Look, I’ll let you know when it’s time to wear shorts. If you want some white, here’s a snowstorm. That’s right, I got your white right here.”

Sometimes our weather uses rain to mess with us during spring. What our weather does in late March and early April is bring us your basic perfect weather: sunny skies, warm conditions, nice breezes. The kind of weather that makes you want to spend all day lying under a tree reading a book. But, of course, you can’t spend all day lying under a tree reading a book because our weather likes to bring us that perfect weather during the week. On weekends, our weather likes to make it rain. A lot.

Then on Monday, our weather likes to bring back the sunshine. Really, is there anything worse than a nice, sunny, warm spring Monday?

This weekend, I’m supposed to be in St. Louis watching basketball. Because I plan to spend most of my weekend either sitting in a large arena watching basketball or sitting in a large sports bar watching basketball, I’m pretty sure our weather will make sure it’s sunny and warm in St. Louis just to make me feel guilty about spending my whole weekend indoors. I won’t, but our weather doesn’t know that.

I also think our weather likes to mess with the folks at Fox News. Our weather likes to let it get real hot early in the spring so Al Gore starts sounding like some sort of seer. Then our weather likes to make it snow. That way, the folks at Fox News can get all excited and start making fun of Al Gore. Then our weather makes it real hot again.

I’m telling you, our weather has a sick sense of humor.

So for all of those reasons, I think it’s going to snow in the next few weeks. I don’t want it to snow. I’m sick of snow, but I think our weather doesn’t want to let go of winter yet. But our weather won’t make it snow right away. Our weather wants to make sure that stores are no longer carrying ice scrapers and that the rest of us have either lost the ones we kept in our cars or have thrown them away. Then our weather will make it snow.

So if you have an ice scraper, hang onto it. You just might convince our weather to hold off on the snowstorm.

Until July.

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