#277 Light of Day

I saw an interesting story on the Discover Channel the other day. It was on the weather. One of the great things about the popularity of the Weather Channel is that now the other channels think it’s cool to do extended stories about the weather as well. Whether it’s because stories about the weather are intrinsically interesting or whether the weather is just cheaper to film, with stock footage and a narrator, who knows. It is cool that a subject that was once relegated to the backwaters of small talk has now emerged as a major current of interest on the airwaves. In any event, this story delved into the mysterious phenomenon of rain on the weekends. We’ve all experienced it. We work hard all week and look forward to that drive to the country to soak up some sunshine and manufacture some vitamin D and as soon as Saturday morning rolls in so do the clouds. By noon they’re ominous and by one they opened up on another missed opportunity to mow the lawn. Well apparently, it’s not just in the Northwest. And it didn’t take any Wappler Doppler to figure it out. It just took a look at the records. Turns out meteorologists keep more statistics than professional baseball. And one of those accumulations of data showed conclusively that the weekend weather is related to the five-day workweek. No, nature doesn’t have a calendar. But people do. And all during the workweek people are working, well some of us anyhow, and while we’re working our industries are belching billions and billions of itty bitty particulates into the air. Our commuting automobiles are lofting even more nasty little bits up there as well. As the week progresses, and more junk follows its migratory route to the skies, the moisture that lurks above begins to gather around these particles—glomming onto them like dust bunnies to a dead cockroach. Eventually, enough moisture envelopes the dust mote, and like a pearl around a grain of sand, a beautiful raindrop forms. And when it gets sufficiently heavy, plummets to the polluted earth with a vengeful glee born of nature’s desire to destroy countless of mankind’s boating trips, barbeques, and badly-planned outside wedding receptions. So what do you do? A four-day workweek? At least that way by the seventh day, the heavens would be purged and we could have at least one day of rest. We could call it Sun day. Oh. Right. Or maybe we could have our weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday until the earth catches on again and then shift it back to Saturday and Sunday. Do it every six months, call it “drylight” saving time. If the summer weekends are on Tuesday and Wednesday we could still squeeze a three day weekend out of a Monday holiday. Or we could suck it up and blow less pollution into the upper atmosphere. Nah. I’m no meteorologist but I predict zero percent chance of that system developing anytime soon.
America, ya gotta love it.