To Rain or Not to Rain

The Littlest Miss woke up in a good mood this morning, which makes everyone’s morning significantly easier. It is a Wednesday and that means I get out for my morning walk a little earlier. I was looking forward to it, it being a mild spring morning. The forecast, however, suggested I might need to wait until 8 am. “Light rain starting shortly,” my phone told me. So I decided to wait until the rain passed and get a little work done first.

Looking out the windows, however, it is clearly not raining. Which means, I could be out instead of sitting here writing this. The rain was supposed to start 20 minutes ago and for 20 minutes, it has not rained. Looking at my phone, it shows that it is raining, and tells me that the rain will stop in 35 minutes. Looking out my window, it is clearly not raining.

Here is the dilemma, one which I am sure everyone is familiar with:

If I trust my eyes, instead of my phone, I will walk half a mile and then the rain will start and I’ll be half a mile from home. If I wait 35 minutes until the alleged rain stops, I’m sure I will never see it start in the first place.

As Thomas Magnum might say, “I know what you’re thinking.” You’re thinking: “Just take an umbrella!” The dilemma there, of course, is that if I go through the trouble of taking an umbrella, the very fact that I take the umbrella will ensure that it will not start raining. Then I’ll be the only one walking with an umbrella, which is kind of humiliating. On the other hand, if I throw caution to the wind and leave my umbrella at home, it will virtually guarantee that it will rain just as soon as I am far enough from the house to make it not worthwhile turning back.

I used to joke with the kids, telling them that I ordered up sunshine for them, or snow, if it was winter (after the fact, of course). But now, it occurs to me that I my actions do seem to influence to the weather. It makes me wonder what other ways I might manipulate the complex interactions of sun, earth and atmosphere? For instance, it seems to me that if I get the snow shovel out of the shed when snow is in the forecast, it never snows. If I leave the shovel in the shed, however: snowmageddon!

If there are strong winds in the forecast and I decide to leave the deck tend up, the winds will almost certainly dislodge it and it will flap around madly. If, however, I spend the twenty-or-so minutes taking the tend apart, then all we’ll get is a mild breeze.

It occurs to me that perhaps the secret to weather control is figuring out what would mitigate the weather circumstances (umbrella, shovel, tent) and then doing that thing if you don’t want the weather in question.

By the way, still no rain.