Understanding Thunder
Weather as varied as the people / Land and fog build summer microclimates
If I didn’t live in San Francisco, I’d also wonder why everyone here is so unaccountably freaked out by mundane things. A warm evening in July. A January weekend without rain. The compulsive rambling about “layers.” Thunder.
Forgive us. It’s weird here. But, it’s weird in a way we all get.
When you live in San Francisco, you accept and even revel in the number of ways that our city — and literally only our city — differs from everywhere else in the world. Setting aside the well-known politics, culture, and overgenerous self-esteem, there’s the climate. And, trust me that we’re not making it up.
It really is insanely, but dependably, weird here.
It’s fucking cold in July. It pisses rain in January and February. Five contiguous blocks might feel 10 degrees colder than the next five — every day. And, yes, you could live here for many years without ever hearing thunder. Sorry. It’s true. Weird but true.
Nothing we’d apologize for, but it seems to unhinge or exhaust so many people — especially anyone who’d assume we’re just crazy hippies in Priusæ who don’t understand that sad clouds make bang-bang noises when rain gets ready to fall down and help the farmers.
No, it’s just that we know the weirdness. We know our weirdness. We trust in the regularity of that weirdness. And when that weirdness deviates into something we know is just clearly not our weirdly normal? Yeah, we say it:
Hm. Now that is weird.
