The Weather Report: Rochester Edition - I
My drivers here always want to talk weather.
One of them said: “So you’re from Washington D.C.? Wow. I bet the weather there isn’t like it is here.”
The year before I arrived, Rochester had a whole month of straight sub-zero temperatures. When I got here, mid-April, it was still in the teens. Windy, too. For a month. I briefly considered going back to Virginia—would have, if I had a friend with a leaky water heater willing to barter shelter for odd jobs.
Does Virginia ever get that cold? No. It has never been that cold there. Not during the Ice Age. Not after the dinosaur meteor, when the world went into a fifty-thousand-year blackout winter. Even then: not Virginia. Because Virginia has the Atlantic, has the mountains. The air can’t sit still long enough to freeze you solid. Rochester doesn’t have that. Rochester has Mayo Clinic, the Winter That Came, and a perpetual 45,000 foot tall solid glacier called "the regional biome".
Sometimes the locals admit it: “We had ancestors who settled here because the land was cheap. Because it was cheap for a reason. It’s not for everyone.”
And they’re right. It’s not.
Maybe they should fucking move.