Weather In All Its Forms

            As a girl from Southern California weather is not something I used to spend much time thinking about.  I have frequently had people point out that this is because there is no weather in So. Cal.  Not so, is my usually response.  We have June Gloom, in you guessed it June, summer is hot but as I grew up less than 15 min from the beach not overly so.  The fire season is in October, I have been told this does not count but I can assure you it does, and the season of mud is in February when the rein causes the hillsides that burned in October to turn into mud and slide down into people’s living rooms.  In general however the area where I grew up usually keeps temps in a 40˚ range between a very cold 55˚ to a very warm 90˚ so coming to Pittsburgh one would expect quite a shock.

The lack of weather was my husbands biggest complaint about CA; followed closely by traffic which we wont discuss, lets just say the Pittsburghers idea of traffic is laughable.  Now I did come to Pittsburgh after spending 3 years in Kalamazoo Michigan which falls directly in the Snow Belt getting the lake effect off Lake Michigan so, I wasn’t as completely ignorant as some who saw my shinny red mustang with CA plates might have assumed.  However moving to western PA has definitely opened up the weather possibilities.  I had always thought that the three month division of seasons was just for convenience but here is a place where the seasons really do stick to being around for 3 months.  So by the time you are ready to move on to the next one it’s already here.  There are of course exceptions to every rule, the heaviest single day snow fall was in March 1993 when 23.6” were recorded, and I believe this was an actual blizzard.  Now in full swing and today and tomorrow are going to see 100˚ temps.  I feel kind of bad for my mom who is landing in Pittsburgh in a few hours leaving behind 60˚ temps but oh well it is going to cool off.

My uncle, when he was studying in Madison Wisconsin, once said in the summer he didn’t care how cold it got as long as it was cooler than this and in the winter he didn’t care how hot it got as long as it was warmer than this.  Pittsburgh can be like this too but extreme 100˚ heat and sub zero temps don’t usually last too long so just staying inside in a temperature controlled space is pretty easy to accomplish.  If there is something I find amazing is the precipitation.  The amount of water, in all its possible forms, is simply staggering.  I grow up in a desert remember.  The act that my lawn doesn’t have and doesn’t need sprinkles is not often believed by my family in CA.  I can remember my mom diligently going out at night to turn the sprinklers on and off in the dark, sometimes as much as three times a week.  My parent’s yard is quite large for their neighborhood so he had to water the lawn in sections.  But you have to shovel snow I can hear them say.  Yes this is true, however I think all last winter my husband had to shovel less than 10 times and I only shoveled once.  I try to help out but mostly he does it.  The fact is regardless of season we get some kind of H2O falling from the sky every week.  Some times there are light gentle soaking rains that water your plants nicely and other times we get violent thunder storms with rain so hard you can’t see across the street and thunder so loud it shakes the house.  I confess I still can not sleep through a loud thunder storm.  When lightning momentarily turns a dark night into day and thunder cracks so loud it sounds like a gun went off by you ear there is not sleeping, for me that is my husband usually only knows there was a storm because I told him about it he next day.  There is one real weather situation we have that truly frightens me and that is Ice.  Now I fully acknowledge that this is because at the end of last winter I hit a patch of lack ice going down a hill and around a curve, it’s Pittsburgh if you are not going up you are going down the flat strait road is rare, and slid into an oncoming car.  But these things happen and you can’t let that stop you.  Everyone was ok except of course my believed mustang that that is what matters, so I am told.  I do like my new car.

            We even get some truly weird weather like thunder and lightning while it’s snowing or poring rain in the sunshine.  These are the types of weather I describe to people in CA and I am pretty sure they don’t believe me but I promos I have personally experienced these events.  They do happen.  The nice thing about Pittsburgh is no matter the weather it won’t stay too long so you don’t get bored with it.  We don’t still have piles of snow in May or endless days of 100˚ temps.  If you like variety Pittsburgh is the place for you.