Dear Blake,
My local area TV meteorologists and reporters have a terrible habit of calling rainy weather “miserable,” cloudy weather “gloomy,” and any other non-sunny day “dreary.” With so many horrible events in the news on a daily basis, reporting the weather this way seems irresponsible and reckless.
For some emotionally vulnerable members of our community, these negative words could be dangerous. Weather is weather. When we were kids, my friends and I would play outside in the rain and none of us ever thought of it as gloomy, dreary or miserable. Using such a powerful medium as television in this way could have a negative impact on people who are already in a dark place.
Signed, Gloria
From Minot, North Dakota
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Dear Gloria,
Different people have a different perspectives and terminology when it comes to the weather. You could do the same thing, even though the words I’m going to suggest you to use may raise some eyebrows, as people question your sanity. Here are some ideas. If there is a heatwave, call it “flakey” because they will happen to your skin after receiving a brutal sunburn. If it’s well below zero, call it “woody”, because if you freeze to death outside, you’ll be as stiff as a board as you get tossed into the back of a pick-up truck, that’s hauling you to the local morgue. If it rains so hard that there is massive flooding, call it “crushing” because that will happen to anyone in you state who is in the way when large herds of bison began to stampede as they seek higher ground. And when it hails call the weather “bouncy”, mainly because when the larger hailstones hit you in the head, they bounced off… after knocking you unconscious. I hope this helps.
Blake