I live in Alabama. I can’t say I chose to live in Alabama, because I was a child of the Navy. I still have not figured out how Dad ended up with orders to head up the recruiting district in the great Naval metropolis of Montgomery, Alabama. But once I got here, I stayed, except for a three year sabbatical to North Carolina when my husband and I were first married. So, it’s safe to say that even if I didn’t choose to live here initially, I have adopted Alabama as my home state.
To live in Alabama means you accept certain things as a given. You accept that from the middle of June through the middle of October you will be living in shorts and staying in air conditioning as much as possible. You accept that come the Fourth of July, you will prefer to watch “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS rather than go to a live fireworks show due to the heat. You accept that your Halloween trick-or-treating will be characterized by heat and humidity rather than the delightful nip of fall the rest of the nation experiences. You accept that the mythical white Christmas will not be your lot in life, and that you will have a drab brown Christmas outside, but at least the kids can play a pick-up flag football game outside that day.
You do not accept waking in the morning to the thermometer's pronouncement that it is a balmy nine degrees outside. You do not accept that you must leave the pipes dripping for a week because the low temperatures increase the chances that your pipes will burst. You do not accept that you have to put on a jacket whenever you leave the house. (Wearing a jacket is my winter bête noire.) And you definitely do not accept that the temperatures will not go above freezing at any time in a given twenty-four-hour period.
I don’t know how those of you in more Northern climes do it. I have never once woken up with the blinding realization that my life will be incomplete until I experience single digit temperatures for a week or more. Nor do I regret the fact that (normally) I do not have to fight ice and snow during my daily commute.
What I have been forced to accept is any forecast beginning with the words “This air mass originated in Siberia….” can’t be good. Thanks to Siberia’s generous gift, we won’t edge north of pipe-dripping temperatures at night time until Saturday.
What weather makes you most uncomfortable? Have you used the weather in your writing effectively?
Nancy, here in southwestern Pennsylvania, we hit -11 one morning this week. While much more accustomed to the cold than you, minus eleven is still too danged cold for me!
ReplyDeleteAnd I use the weather in my writing all the time. It's a must for realism when you have books set where we have all four seasons.
Minus eleven is terribly, terribly cold! Glad you made it through.
DeleteIt's all relative. This week we hit -17F at my winter home and -28F at my summer home. Windchills were in the -30s and -40s. I've lived through weeks where the temperature did not rise above zero Fahrenheit and walked to work at -22F. It's all a matter of clothes and attitude.
ReplyDeleteI use weather in my novels - cold weather in some, hot in others, temperate in others, and often changeable. Because my characters notice the differences and have to adjust to them.
I salute your ability to survive the cold! Having your characters adjusting to the differences in weather does add depth.
DeleteI have your weather - as we both live in Alabama. Brrrrr.... Maybe because the weather is on the warm side usually in the South and I set a lot of my writing in the South, hot weather and sweat sometimes finds their way into my tales.
ReplyDeleteI find that people tend to be a lot more irritable in extreme heat than in the cold, but that may just be me.
DeleteI have a hard time with excessive heat accompanied by high humidity. I lived in coastal Florida for 40 years. Heat, yes, humidity, no that’s what ocean breezes are for. When we moved to the center of the state…Oh, my. There were days our pool felt like a bathtub and I couldn't run because I felt like I was breathing a wet sponge. Not for me. Could have something to do with why I love Maine so much.
ReplyDeleteI have used weather in my books. Hurricanes and gator gushers. Yep. Effectively? Well, you’d have to ask the readers that question. I thought so. Hope your cold is a never to be repeated memory.
Nancy, hang in there! Nine years in Cleveland, Ohio were the worst. The ground was snow-covered for 5 months every year. The sun shined one day a week all winter. It was too cold for the kids to play outside. I carried lock de-icer in my coat pocket. The batteries in the garage door openers froze. And then there was Super Bowl Sunday when we hit minus 24 degrees and had frost on the inside walls.
ReplyDeleteMy current WIP in set during a frigid Ohio January and I use details from both my Cleveland days and my current Cincinnati days (-2 and we dripped the faucets all night).