I’ve been through some pretty unusual weather in my life, like that once a January shorts and tee shirt day when all the snow suddenly melts in seventy degree temperatures, creating a lake in the nether regions of the rolling hills. I’ve had to scrape solid ice from my windshield on a balmy July morning, while wearing shorts and a tee shirt and freezing my tail off. I have seen it snow heavily on my birthday, which is in May, and I have stood in stunned consternation watching it rain, snow, sleet and hail all at the same time.

Indecisive weather aside however, I have learned that when we have a wild, and wet spring, and a timid winter season, the impending summer should be quite a hit. This is especially the case when the mini-monsoon season (spring) begins precisely on the very first day of spring. This is usually a foretaste of very interesting things to come, such as windstorms that would put an F5 tornado to shame, and lightning that rips sideways across the sky. I’ve only seen that happen once but it freaked me enough to last a lifetime, especially since it happened directly over my head while I was walking outside one evening. I saw a splash of light, looked up and my life flashed before my eyes. (It was a short trip.)

Michigan weather is known for its extremes anyway, but when even the extremes start getting extreme, then you know you are in for it. One of these days it will get so bad that the weatherman will have to bite the bullet and forecast the forbidden Michigan weather system….the tornado. I have said before in other articles, that Michigan is not allowed to have tornadoes. We call them down drafts. Down drafts apparently sound so much better than tornado or twister. We have very talented, multi-tasking down drafts that can rip trees right out of the ground, twist off their tops, and remove entire roofs from houses, but never do we get tornadoes.

Someday I’ll probably be standing at my window watching a twister coming at me, and be thinking to myself, “hmm, that’s one heck of a nice looking down draft, I think I’ll just stand here and watch it for a while.” Not. Although there are people who do just that, and will even stand there like idiots taking video of the storm for posterity’s sake. Always in the background of those videos you will hear someone’s frantic voice (usually a woman) shouting, “hey you idiot! Stop videotaping and get down to the basement!” Meanwhile, the guy keeps right on filming, (it’s always a guy) and you can hear him proclaiming in the background, “whooo-eee! That’s some twister out there! Looks like it’s gonna take the neighbor’s pool for sure.”

This guy has to take this video. He has to, because he hates the perfect neighbors with their perfect house and perfect lawn and perfect inground swimming pool. Just once, he wants to see something less than perfect happen to those people and he’s GOING TO GET IT ALL ON TAPE, thank you very much, even if it means he has to stand there until the tornado swoops down on top of his head. He will probably die but it will be worth it to him if someone finds that tape afterwards and runs it on the national news. “News at eleven…man videotapes to his death, gets great footage of neighbor’s house breaking into pieces. New widow still searching for man so she can get closure.” In this case, closure means that she wants to kill him again.

Weather is generally considered one of the safest topics for people to discuss on a date, but watch out for the pitfalls of this type of conversation….namely, one-upmanship. If he has seen a hurricane, she has lived through two of them. If she was recently snowed in behind four foot high drifts, he has written the book on how to survive in Antarctica by living in an igloo. If it rains for six days nonstop at his home, she will have just returned from a sixteen day vacation in the rain forests of South America. While religion and politics may still be the most combustible topics in the world, weather rates right up there as the I-can-do-anything-better-than-you-can approach to dating….or is that debating?

So, remember these words of advice….if spring comes in with a roar and winter goes out with a whimper, it’s gonna be one heck of a summer! Of course, as we all know, there are always exceptions to every rule. But one thing that will never change is the fact that weather forecasters, try as they might, will never get it completely right. It’s a good thing too because if they ever got it right, they would be absolutely impossible to live with.