At this time of year especially, weather is on everyone's mind—and on everyone's tongue. It is Topic A everywhere, more apt to be chatted about than money, food, sex or even scandals. Nor is it regarded as trivial small talk—"the discourse of fools," as an English proverb has it. Indeed, it is fodder for the conversation of board chairman and bored charwoman, of young and old, of the bright, the dull, the rich and the poor. As if this basic coin of conversation needed to be gilded, the average American constantly reads about the weather in his newspapers and magazines, listens to regular forecasts of it on the radio and watches while some TV prophet milks it for cuteness on the evening news.
Since the weather is to man what the waters are to fish, his preoccupation with it serves a unique purpose, constituting a social phenomenon all its own. Far from arising merely to pass the time or bridge a silence, "weathertalk," as it might be called, is a sort of code by which people confirm and salute the sense of community they discover in the face of the weather's implacable influence. By dispensing a raging blizzard, a driving rainstorm or even a sunny day, the weather tends to ameliorate the estrangements inherent in cultural divisions and social stratifications. Inspired by exceptional weather, otherwise immutable strangers suddenly find themselves in communion. In the spoken code, all those weathered cliches -"Cold enough for you?" "Good day for ducks, huh?" "Gonna be a hot one!" "What a day!"—mean the same thing: "We are, after all, in this boat together."
The boat sails on, buffeted by the winds, tossed by the waters, drenched by the heavens—its inhabitants subject not only to the physical effects of the weather but to its metaphysical sway as well. People everywhere, including the U.S., confront the weather with marvelously confused feelings and attitudes. They love it as an unrivaled spectacle and fear it as an unrivaled destroyer. One day they curse the rain, the next they dream of walking in it barefooted with a lover. They study meteorology in school, while clinging to the conviction that the weather can be forecast on the basis of the behavior of bugs, animals and vegetation. Groundhog day is still observed.
As victims, people hate to cancel a picnic on account of rain, and yet they often cheer when the weather brings human activity to an abrupt standstill. Very few people are like Blaise Pascal, who insisted: "The weather and my mood have little connection." Most feel that the weather indeed affects their moods, and yet a gloomy day does not necessarily mean a gloomy disposition for all: a book before the hearth, an afternoon of tinkering in the basement or an extended visit to the local bar pleases some people as well as the brightest sun. And at least one study of test scores seemed to suggest that the occasion of a violent storm stimulated the intellectual performance of an entire class of students.