Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in Mark Twain, the famous American author, once said of the weather, “Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it.” He was right, but if we could do anything about it, another parade would never get rained out.
Ball games would never be postponed because of lightning. For every wedding day, the weather would be perfect! It would rain only on farms and ranches, where the owners wanted rain. The problem is that we’d all want something different, and who would we put in charge of weather and climate? It’s probably best that we have no control over the weather, but having accurate weather forecasts isn’t a bad thing.
“Weather” isn’t an event. Weather is the condition of the atmosphere at any given minute on any given day. Weather isn’t written in stone or welded into place. Weather changes year by year, month by month, day by day and sometimes from one minute to the next.
Sunny skies, 80-degree temperature and a light southerly breeze is weather. So is a thunderstorm with thunder and lightning, a hurricane, or a snowstorm. The point is that we can’t choose our weather.
But we can choose the climate in which we live. Climate is the atmospheric condition over a large area and over a long period of time. Some climates are said to be “humid,” while others are said to be “dry.” In a humid climate, the humidity is usually high, and in a dry climate, the humidity is usually low.
Northern climates are “cold,” and southern climates are “warm”; but those descriptions are generalizations. A cold climate can experience warm temperatures and a warm climate can experience cold temperatures. “Climate” is the term used to describe the usual weather conditions.
You can choose your climate, but you have to take whatever weather conditions that happen (and change) from day to day.