When the check-out line at Lowe’s slowed and emptied, the other cashiers and I flocked toward the sliding doors. Some of us were in high school and in college, and others in their 60s and 70s, but we saw in each other a shared giddiness. We felt increased energy. When customers started walking up to the registers, it was hard for us to look away from the windows, but they noticed the weather too; they felt the same energy that we did.
People who normally wouldn’t look me in the eye in the hopes that I wouldn’t ask them to sign up for a credit card were now looking out at the gathering storm clouds behind me and striking up a conversation:
“Oh wow, was it supposed to rain today?”
“It’s really starting to look bad out there; look at those clouds!”
“I hope I can make it out to my car before this rain hits.”
“One thing that everybody can talk about in line at the grocery store is the weather,” says Marisa Ferger, meteorologist and professor at Penn State University. Apparently, this also holds true for Lowe’s. As I worked the register while the storm clouds built up, genuine conversation was building as well. A typical day as a cashier involved polite conversation and artificial insights; but on this stormy day, the customers and I had a shared interest. I was excited to talk to them, and happy to pull out my phone and show them my weather app and the red splotches growing on the radar.
When Dr. Trevor Harley, self-acclaimed psychometeorologist, heard me describe my experience at Lowe’s, he immediately noted two important qualities about the weather that fostered these genuine interactions: weather is safe, and weather is common. “There’s a social agreement that it’s safe to talk about the weather. We can start a conversation if we want, and the other person can take it as far as they want. It’s risk-free, but provides opportunities,” Dr. Harley explained. By risk, Dr. Harley means social risk. “If you start talking about politics, or virtually anything else, there is risk.” The weather, as a conversational topic, allows us to interact without the fear of tension or discomfort. Polarizing topics like politics and religion risk disagreement and argument, because people can have different opinions with varying degrees of conviction.
Again, my Lowe’s experience was relevant. Customers would occasionally attempt to talk with me about politics while I scanned their items. During the election year and a pandemic, this was inevitable, but these conversations were difficult to hold when we didn’t agree. Several customers despised the mask mandates and dubbed the clear, plastic barriers burdens, while I saw them as safety. These conversations never progressed, because instead of a connection, I felt separation from these people when they spoke. By comparison, the rainstorm pounding on the roof of the store fostered a connection, and I think we forgot about the masks on our faces as we listened to the onslaught and watched the dark clouds roll by.
In addition to being a risk-free conversation, weather is also a common, shared experience. “Weather impacts every single person,” Professor Ferger stresses. “It can affect their commute to work, sending their children to the bus stop, and in the long term, weather can even impact food prices at grocery stores, because poor weather conditions can lead to a poor harvest.” We are all impacted by weather and its effects.
At Lowe’s that day, several customers stood just outside of the exit doors under the roof, waiting for the downpour to slow. One of them had a cart full of wiring and electrical outlets, and although they were contained in several plastic bags, he didn’t want to risk soaking them. Another had several expensive boards of lumber; he planned to use the wood to build a deck, but he didn’t want it to face the elements just yet. An elderly woman waited inside with us. She had a small bag of tools and nails for her husband, who she told us was too lazy to come out and shop again for the things he had forgotten. She waited simply because she didn’t want to get wet. Her husband could wait a bit longer for his tools.
We cannot control the weather; we can only react when it comes. And although we all react differently, we share the experience of the same, uncontrollable storms, winds, rain, and snow. “People unite even on this minor scale,” says Dr. Harley, “Few people want to get wet. But there are varying degrees of weather disaster -- flooding, hurricanes, snowstorms -- where people unite to take action.” Weather again pulls us together, especially at its worst. During natural disasters, people unite in a different, more determined way.
“When the call for help is put out, people respond,” Professor Ferger says, based on personal and professional experiences. As an example, she mentioned the recent viral photograph of two exhausted Domino’s employees in San Antonio Texas. Amid the February winter storms and power outages, restaurants struggled to open, and nearly every pizza shop in the area was closed except for this one Domino’s location. Employee July DeLuna’s photograph captured a counter full of crumbs and pizza toppings and two of her exhausted coworkers. They had run out of a weekend’s worth of food in only four hours. DeLuna shared the photo on Facebook where it went viral and made the headlines of several news stations. She captioned it with an emotional and exasperated paragraph, with the final line, “Please understand we work hard not because we have to but because we want to help and we care.”
These Domino’s employees were praised as heroes for their work in feeding a community, but they weren’t the only people who stepped up during the snow storms and outages. Plumbers worked around the clock to try to fix burst pipes, a furniture store offered shelter, and neighbors helped one another regularly as they shared generators, inspected one another’s homes and pipes, and distributed bottles of water and other essential items to those who needed them.
When Professor Ferger discussed the Texas storms, I couldn’t help but recall what I had seen on social media during that time because it was not people coming together to help. Instead, I saw posts full of anger, frustration, and hopelessness. Posts circulated, full of outrage at the utter failing of Texas’ government to prevent the power outages and damage from the snowstorms. People lamented their own situations and the plight of those less fortunate; because, as with many things in this world, “weather can heighten inequities,” notes Ferger.
Nonprofits, weary community leaders, exhausted neighbors, and everyday people rallied together in Texas because they had to: to repair the damages, to find and provide shelter, to keep people fed and warm. Without unity in this moment, more people would have perished, especially those who faced pre-existing challenges exacerbated by the storm. In Texas, “people experiencing homelessness were thrust into life-threatening danger.” Angel Rodriguez Medina spent a night in a sleeping bag amid piles of snow; the 86-year-old said, “I didn’t think I’d wake up alive.” Living outside in the cold just isn’t feasible. The next morning, a case manager offered Medina a warm car to sleep in; she helped several other homeless people throughout the weeks during and after the storm.
Even homeowners found that what they lacked was exploited by the snowstorm. Iris Cantu and her daughter Samara now live in the “habitable half of [their] house.” In the inhabitable half, the ceiling had collapsed from burst pipes. Cantu’s homeowner’s insurance would not cover the damage, and she was faced with $6,000-$7,000 in repairs; money she simply did not have after working in the service industry throughout a pandemic.
Tumaini Criss’s home was similarly destroyed by burst pipes, forcing her and her sons to spend several nights in a charter bus, which was used as an emergency warming shelter for families displaced by the power outages and water damage. Criss and her sons remained on the bus until a community organizer told them that she had secured a hotel room: “So you’ll be there tonight. When you guys come back tomorrow, we’ll have some hot meals. And we’ll tackle another day and just kind of figure it out. We’ll just keep— day by day. We’re in this together, man.”
The stories of these women were featured on an episode of New York Times: The Daily podcast. The journalist who interviewed these women, and who reported the story noted the disparity, and how the weather disrupted their fragile livelihoods. “These neighborhoods -- which are predominantly Black and Hispanic -- these neighborhoods are the first to lose power and they’re the last to get it on. They’re the hardest to get hit and the last to recover.”
While “hearts open up in times of need,” as Professor Ferger noted, it is disheartening to see how the poor and marginalized are always the hardest hit. In these moments, the weather reminds us we are human and part of this Earth; we are subject to natural elements, and we do not have as much control as we think we do. The weather exploits the weaknesses in our human society, the flaws in the systems we’ve constructed. But it also draws out human kindness, and reminds us that we are social, communal creatures who naturally have an urge to help and take care of one another. In response to The Daily episode, a listener from California, Devon Slattery, established a Go-Fund Me page for Cantu, Criss, and Suzanne Mitchell, the third woman featured on the podcast. It has raised $14,641. The weather reminds us of who we are -- both good and bad.
Throughout the last year, a different natural disaster has had a similar effect. COVID-19 has brutally exposed inequities, especially for minority groups, and it has bitterly reminded us of how much we need each other. COVID-19 has forced us apart and separated us from our social circles and communities. But the weather, ever present, has allowed us to come together. Fresh air disperses the virus, and ultraviolet light from the Sun can kill it, reducing your chances of becoming infected. So clear skies and warm weather mean that we can spend time together safely outside. In fact, the CDC just lifted outdoor mask mandates in the U.S. for fully vaccinated people. Again, the weather has brought us together. To a degree, I think the weather might have even saved us.
I told my friend Kelley the other day, while walking outside at a safe distance, that spring felt different this year. I swear that there are more trees blooming than ever, more tulips and crocuses and daffodils than I’d ever seen before. I don’t think that more trees have grown or more flowers were planted; however, I think that enduring the pandemic through the winter months opened my eyes to the changing seasons, and I embraced spring with open arms. Kelley agreed. She said that her springtime allergies used to stop her from going outside, but now she didn’t care. The warmth of the sun and the company of people were completely worth it.
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