Learning our New Weather

"They" say we are about to be in a heat wave. It's only June 9th. It's not even technically summer. We are learning the climate here in our new city. 

That got us chatting up the places we lived and how we acclimated and what we had to learn.

Each time we've moved we had to learn about the climate and see how our lives and routine would be in this new climate. 

My first 2 moves after my hometown were to Pittsburgh and then Cleveland. Honestly the same as my hometown weather-wise with just much less snow so this was not a big change in any way. Then again everyone has less snow than Erie PA with the exception of Buffalo.

Rick grew up in central PA with the weather being just like my hometown only less snow. He also lived in Ohio in a small city west of Cleveland on the lake. Same weather as my hometown only less snow just like Cleveland. You see the pattern here. We both pretty much grew up and had our first moves away from our hometowns to cities where the weather was all pretty much the same. 

Then we moved to Seattle in 1995. 

Oh my was that a change in weather after leaving the snow belt. (culture shock as well)

There was no snow to speak of unless we went to the mountains to ski. 

It did snow one time and boy are they not equipped for that!  It was a nightmare and with those hills/mountains...not a fun combo. We learned that those who grew up in Seattle think they are the only people who get heavy wet snow. That would make Rick and I have a good laugh. We had a neighbor who insisted snow everywhere else was light and fluffy. She didn't believe it wasn't endemic to the Pacific Northwest. She was a clueless cute blonde thing. 

Overall it was always cool there even when it was what everyone called hot. 

It was only in the low to mid 80 degrees in August. 

Now granted this was in the mid-90s and I understand it gets much hotter there now thanks to climate change. 

Winter, fall, and spring were all the same in Seattle to us. Dark, damp, and dreary. Nothing, I repeat, nothing was more beautiful than a sunny clear February day. 

I had 2 of them in my 2 years of living there.

I remember driving from Issaquah on I-90 into Seattle and the vista was breathtaking. Seeing the snow-capped Olympics and the snow-covered Cascades in my rear view mirror. I have yet to see anything that gorgeous to compare. 

But then there are the days where it is dark when you leave for work and it's dark by 4pm before you leave work to head home. Always dark. And those clear February days? You were lucky to get one day. It was such a disappointment yet when you got that one day my God we enjoyed the hell out of it!! We soaked it up. Then the rest of the time you never even saw the mountains because of the cloudiness. I never ever thought it would bother me but it did. It changes you. 

In the summer we experienced something there we had never experienced before or after - it was now light at 10pm at night in the summer. That was cool. All that daylight was a gardener's dream and boy did we love that! Daylight, not to be confused with sunlight, big difference.

Summer while living there was between mid-July to the end of August and then it's dreary again. 

We found the adjustments we had to make for the weather were -

• How to deal with living like a mushroom.
• How to live with cold unfriendly people. Was the dark, damp, coldness the cause of this? We felt like it had to have some correlation. Everyone we met not from there saw this which made us feel better but it was not pleasant to live around. The funniest of all is they just love that everyone thinks they are cold. They are proud of it. Weird right? We made a friend there who left the area and went to the midwest for several years.  She knew we felt this way about the people but she didn't see it. A few years ago she wrote me an email to tell me she went back to Seattle and she saw it all through different eyes. She apologized to me. Not necessary. But she felt she poo-pooed me (she did) and she wanted me to know she saw it. 
• How to not get depressed and have it sneak up on you.
• How to not get wet like the locals achieved while standing in pouring rain. That was something to witness. It took me two/2 yrs but it finally happened!! Coolest thing ever!

Then we moved to Maryland. After not seeing the sun for so long this was overwhelmingly sunny all the damn time for us at first. This was a 180-degree difference. It was a shock to our system in a big way. We laugh about this now because it wasn't overly sunny but the sun did come out almost every day and that was weird after leaving our cave in Seattle. I remember driving home from the airport shortly after moving there and the sun was burning my arm through my window wishing to God the sun would just go behind a cloud. 

I wasn't used to humidity like this because when it was 100% humidity it rained in Seattle. Now it was just so damn hot and humid.  Now we find it funny that we both couldn't handle the bright yellow ball in the sky and the heat after a couple of years of living like a mushroom in dark and dank conditions. But we got over it after the first year.

Maryland was sunny and warm when we thought it should be cold, that was weird to us at first. Warm is all relative since anything not damp was warm after Seattle. But warmer than any place we'd lived up to that point. 

We moved to VA just a bit further in the other direction of the beltway. Still in the DMV as it's called. It was the same temp give or take a degree. But by now we were aware of how to deal with the heat and truth be told by this time we were not only used to it, we rather liked it. The things we had to learn to adjust to when getting there were - 

• We learned what a Nor'Easter was and we didn't much like 'em.
• We had to change our schedule to go out to do things early in the morning by mid-July. The afternoons were too damn hot.
• Spring there was very short but glorious as was fall. 
• Winter was coldish (40s) but not much snow but enough that it happened 2x a year just to remind you it's winter
• They got hysterical when there was weather of any kind other than sunny and warm. It's raining  - break into regularly scheduled programming for hours to talk about what happens should it rain. In the winter they would say, it MAY snow 2 inches - stop all tv for 24hrs and only talk about the 2 inches of snow that MAY come. Schools are closed because they MAY get snow. Cancellations abound and never any snow.
• The people were warm and friendly and this is what we liked vs. Seattle.

Now North Carolina.

The weather is very close to Northern VA. Tad bit warmer. Here there are hurricane concerns as well as tornados. Where do you go in a tornado if you don't have basements here? No one has a good answer to me. 

Hurricanes are not a big concern since we are 2 hrs from the coast but we will get nasty weather associated with the storms.  I have seen that already so that is like our nor'easter I guess. 

We have now lived in NC through Fall, Winter, and Spring and they were picture perfect. Curious about summer here but I think I can see what is coming.

Now it's in the 90s and humid and tropical and it's only early June. 
They are telling us to brace for a heat wave coming in a couple of days.

So here comes our next shift for Rick and me.

So far we have had to not change much because of weather/climate. 

Just flipping our winters to our summers.

Instead of staying indoors more in winter as we did in the north due to the cold, we will stay indoors more in summer because it is too dang hot.

Up north we parked our car in the garage in winter. 

Here we park our car in the garage in summer. 

We learned that very quickly 2 weeks ago. Wowsa!