When I was a kid and my grandparents were alive, they used to call once a week from Florida. As my parents handed me the phone, I was already frowning, because I knew the first question they would always ask: “How’s the weather?’’
It never failed. Week after week. Call after call. “How’s the weather?” Holidays. Birthdays. “How’s the weather?” As I aged into my teens, I associated their question with pity. “How’s the weather?” was clearly something old people asked when they had nothing else to talk about.
Times change.
I am writing this column with 9 inches of snow outside my Michigan window and a temperature gauge that reads minus 1, as one of the worst winter storms in many years is poised to impact the entire country. There are warnings of “catastrophic” ice accumulations in the South, windchills in the minus 40s in the Midwest, heavy snow or ice in at least 34 states, and an affected population of up to 230 million Americans.
One winter storm?
Two-thirds of the country?
In the many decades I have been writing this column, I have covered topics ranging from poverty to sled dogs, from the Olympics to Ozempic. I have never, near as I can recall, devoted an entire column to the weather.
A cold wind is blowing.
Times change.
Watching the weather …
Let’s face it. Weather has morphed from forecast to fear. From almanac to apocalypse. Weather used to tell us what clothes we should wear; now it seems to foretell the end of the world.
What changed? It happened in steps. Up until the mid-20th century, children concerned themselves with only a few weather-related facts:
1) Will it rain (so we can play in the mud)?
2) Will it snow (so we can sled down the hill)?
3) Will school be canceled (please)?
As adults, our concerns shifted slightly:
1) Will it rain (and ruin my clothes and hair)?
2) Will it snow (and make driving a mess)?
3) Will school be canceled (and I have to watch the kids)?
Then came the 1970s and ’80s, when TV news replaced brief weather reports with “meteorologists.” Weather info increased exponentially. The Weather Channel arrived in the 1980s, which gave 24-hour-a-day access to climate nerds. This was followed by seemingly endless radar prediction innovations in the 1990s and 2000s.
Armed with all these new ways to measure, we became more and more engrossed in what was happening in the clouds and sky. Low pressure systems. Humidity. Windchill. Heat index. I remember living in Florida in the 1980s, when weather began consuming four or five minutes of a 20-minute nightly news broadcast. And heaven forbid a hurricane was coming! It was wall-to-wall coverage.
It reminded me of that old Paul Simon lyric, “I get all the news I need on the weather report.”
There was plenty of it.
Winds of change
Not surprisingly, armed with all this data, when the climate change issue moved to the forefront, the American public was greased and ready to be engrossed. And now, winter storms like the one this weekend aren’t just about how much snow we will have to shovel, they’re about the future of the world. Hurricanes, heat waves, massive cold fronts, all bring, along with their rain or beating sun, warnings of how much time we have left on the planet.
There is no, “Boy we had a lot of snow this year.” It’s now, “Boy we had a lot of snow this year — what do you think that means?”
One big problem, however. Americans are now so inundated with weather information, we don’t know what to believe. For every activist who screams “We’ve never seen climate like this!” there’s a cynic with ancient almanacs that yells, “Sure, we have!’’
For every “alarmist” with a doomed climate model, there’s a “realist” with differing satellite data.
For every protester who insists we change our economies to save ourselves from disaster, there’s an economist who insists that would do more harm than good.
And even though most of the world seems to agree that the globe is warming, many regular folks will pull on their ski masks and winter coats this week and ask, “Then why is it so damn cold?”
I wish I had the answer. Most of us wish we had the answer. All I know is, if I went outside and spit right now, it might freeze before it hit my shoe.
I miss the days when we didn’t have to think about climate this much. And I wonder if my grandparents — when they repeatedly asked me, “How’s the weather?” — knew more than they let on.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.
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