Have you accounted for the weather?

As a youth, it was considered passé to talk about the weather. Yet, there are few things you can talk about that are as important for the outlook of your day, week, month, or year. This was obvious when we lived closer to subsistence, but is hidden from us living in temperature and humidity controlled buildings for most of our lives.

Subsumed to Outlook Calendar and quarterly reports, most of us forget that our energy comes from the sun. We are affected by its penetrations, as surely as any skink.

To maximize your energy, you would want to follow the rhythms of your body, which has a relationship to sun, wind, and water. Yet there are bills to pay.

Many of our friends closer to the East or Gulf Coasts of the United States just experienced their coldest winter. In the American Steppe, we experienced our warmest winter.

Every year, people move to this county, experience a winter, and then promptly move away. This year, that wouldn't have happened!

Entire life trajectories changed. 

At sea or growing food, predicting the weather is a matter of survival. 

To understand what plants and animals will live best here, I filter for Köppen climate BSk, in addition to soil types.

Köppen was an ethnically German grandson of a physician imported to Russia by Catherine the Great. An ambulance service man in the Franco-Prussian war (where Prussia established the dominance that led to much of modern schooling & militaries), he found ways to improve predictions for sailors, and pretty soon, everyone else, using balloons and everything at his disposal. He was ridiculously prolific.

B means 'dry'. S means 'semi-arid steppe'. k means 'cold'. 

As a child, I was in Af. A is 'tropical'. f is 'forest'. 

My teenaged and early adult years were mostly Cfa. C is 'temperate'. The f in Cfa is 'no dry season'. The a in Cfa is 'hot summer'. 

So moving to a Mediterranean-like Csb, (Temperate, dry summer, warm summer) was an absolute relief in my late twenties. I used to think I was a nocturnal "inside person" who didn't like doing things outdoors. That climate changed everything.

Whatever environments they encounter, climate will shape our descendants. 

What is your climate history?