So, old guys talk too much about the weather? Here is why I talk about it so much:
I have endured 101-mph wind gusts, a 50-inch snowfall, 112-degree high temperatures and minus-45 low temperatures plus I have had two cars declared total losses from hail. I even have had a nephew sucked out of his car during a wreck caused by a tornado.
Yes, I am entitled to talk about the weather!
Like people talking about the weather a lot, I have written about the weather a lot over the years. And here we go again.
Extreme Weather
• Not long after we moved to Lander in the early 1970s, our town endured what is called a Foehn. This is a wave of air that rapidly descends down a mountainside and smashes into the community below.
Boulder, Colorado, is another place in the Rockies that sees these odd winds that mimic waterfalls.
On this day, the wind blew consistently over 80 mph for five minutes and topped out a 101 mph. I ventured outside in it to rescue yard furniture while wearing my snowmobile helmet for protection from flying objects.
• The biggest snowstorm in Lander’s history in 1999 amounted to 50 inches and it was the end of April.
• I played golf in 112-degree temperatures in Dallas, TX one Labor Day weekend in 1998. Whew!
• Here in Lander, the temperatures plummeted to -45 back in the 1980s on two or three occasions. It was scary still outside and you could not breathe that air without coughing.
• I had a car totaled by the annual Cheyenne Frontier Days hailstorm a few years ago and another one totaled by hail down in Texas one notorious spring day.
• My nephew Myke Sniffin was sucked out of the back of the family Suburban when tossed by a tornado in Hazelton, Iowa, about 25 years ago. He survived and today is studying to be a meteorologist.
Social Media?
One of my sources claims that old folks talking about weather is the original “social media.” He also claims that if you hang out with an old person for more than five minutes, he will bring up the weather. This is considered iron-clad positive.
My friend Del McOmie, 89, told me: “We talk about the weather because we don't like to deal with it anymore. It's a lot harder on you when you're older. When I was younger, I looked at it as a challenge. Now I look at it as a pain in the rear.
“The elderly talk about the weather because it appeals to everyone. The elderly get detached with what many younger people are interested in and often feel like they have nothing to offer. The elderly want to be heard and sometimes having a conversation about the weather is the only thing they have in common.”
Ray Hunkins says he and his son would jump in their pickup and follow the big storms that seemed to constantly hit their hometown of Wheatland each summer . . . and boy does that part of the state get severe weather!
My 30 years as a private pilot also made me very interested in the weather. We also owned a big boat on the very windy and capricious Flaming Gorge Lake for 10 years. The late Ford Bussart of Sweetwater County had a giant boat just across the slip from us and we became great friends. He was a weather expert.
Several times he and I would fight some crazy east winds that tried to blow our boats out of their moorings.
An Old Soul Comments
Author John Waggener (he grew up in Green River and now lives in Laramie) is not that old but offers some insights that make a lot of sense. I accuse him of being “an old soul.”
He is an expert on weather for having lived his life in the Interstate 80 corridor. He also wrote the book Snow Chi Minh Trail about that great highway. Here are his thoughts:
“Perhaps with guys generally being the out-of-doors types, there is a reason we became so focused on the weather. Secondly, as the man is often the designated driver for road trips, some pre-trip weather planning always has been part of the preparation – calling road and travel back in the day, reading the weather reports . . . things like that.
“Talking of Weather, for males, seems to be a rite of passage. I recall vividly witnessing this rite of passage unfold before my eyes one morning when I heard my much younger relative, who was about 19 at the time, say to some younger neighbor kids who were going to go play in the fresh snow: ‘You don’t know what snow is; When I was your age . . .’ And he went on describing how bad the winters were in the 1990s. I began to chuckle under my breath. A decade earlier, I remember saying something similar, ‘Ah, the winters back in the early 80s were way worse than other decades.’
“That rite seems to be that you live just long enough, perhaps as young as 18 or 19, to be able to look back on your childhood days with memories of grand storms that brought your town to a standstill, and those younger than you will never, ever possibly understand what it was like to be a kid who grew up in (insert your favorite decade here).
“Finally, this point could possibly be made in a sarcastic sort of way. One thing about weather talk is that it was safe. Well, not anymore. A discussion about weather in mixed company can quickly turn into a political firestorm.
“A simple comment like: ‘Wow, it sure has been hot and dry,’ can really be a trigger for some. You might get a response like: ‘Yeah, that’s because of that big diesel truck you drive. You’re the problem!’
“So, the topic of weather is not even safe for small talk anymore. You better know your audience before you talk about the recent heat wave or you might get cross with a member of the monkey wrench gang, and you will find your truck tires slashed in the morning or discover a pound of sugar had been poured into the fuel tank!”
Rain, Sleet, Snow . . .
Who would have thought that Baby Boomers would someday get old? My coffee group of 70-somethings say things like the following six mornings a week:
“If there’s one thing old men love more than talking about the weather, it’s WINNING at talking about the weather. This also sounds a lot like the infamous Bench Sitters up in Buffalo who cuss and discuss the weather all the time.
“You think this winter is cold? You should have been here in 1982. Or that time in Jackson on New Year’s Day in 1972!
“You think this summer is hot? You wouldn’t have survived July of 1966.
“Flooding? Ha! There was a time in 1963 when the whole town was underwater, and they still made it to school uphill, both ways, in irrigator boots.”
Yup, sounds familiar.
