Good Morning.
On CBS Sunday Morning, Jane Pauley always begins the show with the news headlines and a quick look at the national weather. It'll be rainy here, frigid cold somewhere else. Yesterday she pronounced that Florida would be perfect for the next week.
There is no such thing as perfect and certainly not for more than a day or two. The weather in Florida can change on a dime, as it can anywhere in the country. I knew one family who set off during Spring Break for a vacation at Disneyworld, only to be greeted by thirty degree temperatures that lasted the entire week they were there. There also are things called hurricanes that batter the state almost every year, and the only advantage to that particular weather event is that people have plenty of warning so they can evacuate, those that have the sense to do it. Hurricanes strike all of the Gulf states as well as all along the eastern seaboard and have, in recent years, made a mess of locations as far north as New Jersey, even doing damage in Vermont. They seldom hit Maine, an utterly beautiful place but one where it takes a fair amount of fortitude to venture into the ocean for a swim; the water is ridiculously cold even in August. Maine, like her sister New England states, can have long, harsh winters which is why people head south to Florida.
The snowbirds in my part of the country are more likely to go to Arizona with its dry, desert climate that may be delightful
in February but is beastly hot in August. The monsoon season turns all that scenic clay between Phoenix and Sedona into a
mushy red when it rains for days on end. California, another place claiming to be paradise, has mud slides, forest fires, and earthquakes. If you build your dream house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, the ground will probably give way at some point and send the living room onto the rocky shores below. The richly forested northwest seems to escape the more violent weather experienced elsewhere - except awhile back Mount St. Helens threw up tons of ash that floated all over the place on the unpredictable air currents. And all that lush greenery comes at a price which is more rain than sun throughout the year. Colorado, another place with an abundance of trees, seems to have a pretty good set up, weather-wise, except for the occasional avalanche.
Then we have the midsection of the country that is prone to tornadoes. A beautiful farm with acres of corn and soybeans and a barn straight out of a picture book can be flattened in no time and a small town can look like a war zone in two minutes. Most locations have warning systems and Doppler radar is now able to predict the likelihood of a tornado, but it's still a capricious form of weather that can blow up quickly. The movie Twister is an accurate portrayal of what happens in Oklahoma, a state that is also plagued with earthquakes because of fracking. These continual rumblings aren't natural in origin but scary nonetheless.
Most folks live where they grew up and brag about it, or they move somewhere else for a job and put up with whatever
nature dishes out. At the end of the day, even when the normally gorgeous sunset is a depressing grey fading into the
black of night, the only thing that matters is the people, and none of them are perfect either.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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