During my rainy, shivery drive to work today, I felt a little bit jealous for the weather St. Louis had been having for the past day and a half. It was apparently over 70 degrees there yesterday, which is otherwise known as What We Can Expect From Seattle in the Summer. In this city, though, we’re in the middle of a week of rain, which is typical for this time of year but can wear on you when it’s Sunday and you’re still in your fat pants and you remember that you have to go to work tomorrow. In that weather.

I wasn’t really jealous, though, first of all because if there’s one constant about St. Louis weather, it’s that it’s erratic. And by “erratic,” I mean “motherfucking crazy.” 70 and sunny on Monday can mean frigid with snow flurries on Tuesday, and it’s worth remembering that, in the Midwest, anyway, a warm front that’s met with a rapidly-moving cool front means everyone’s favorite basement activity – tornados! Man, I miss tornados. Although I don’t so much miss them as I miss the Kegel-like stress-clenching of my butthole and groin, which always scared me at the time but probably provided the conditioning that a woman in her thirties needs, in addition to daily calcium.

Anyway, I was thinking the other day about how my expectations of the weather have changed. In St. Louis, I’d see a darkening sky and approaching bank of clouds like this:

In Seattle, I know it’s just a weather system created by the mountains and the Sound, and that unless I’m driving in it with a bunch of assholes who don’t know how, it’ll impact my life in precisely the amount of time it takes me to walk to the mailbox and back. I know that my likelihood of ever seeing a tornado here is quite slim, considering there have been only 5 since 1950 and the only person ever injured by one was back in 1969. And that storm was a mere F3. I’m sure you’ve seen Twister, you can work that one out.

Compare that to St. Louis, where 39 have been reported in the metropolitan area alone in the same amount of time, and the mostly F4 storms have caused a total 13 deaths and 391 injuries. I think this number is perhaps inaccurately low, but I suppose it’s confirmed tornados instead of just damaging wind, rain, and debris and a power grid that’s none too stable.

So I’m glad to be out of storms’ way, and I’m thinking about all of my friends back home who have to get nervous about the warnings, get to the basement because of the sirens, and possibly sit in the dark for awhile because the power’s gone out again.

Sit tight, everyone. And squueeeeeeeze.