All posts tagged: gale-force winds

The Weather Is Perfectly Interesting, Actually

The Weather Is Perfectly Interesting, Actually

Oscar Wilde never said that “conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” Patrick Zachmann / Magnum February 20, 2024, 6 AM ET The other day, a colleague came by my desk to chat about the weather. The sky outside was dark and menacing, and the meteorologists, she told me with widening eyes, were predicting gale-force winds, a fact that we both found intriguing (what even qualifies as a gale?). We were having a perfectly nice conversation at the end of a long day, from my perspective. And then she ruined it. “Sorry,” she said. “I know talking about the weather is boring.” Many innocent people around the world suffer from this misapprehension. We are taught that discussing the weather is the epitome of meaningless drivel and the mark of a poor conversationalist, the vocal equivalent of a sign declaring I am an uninteresting person. But this stigma is based on a simple analytical error. In the paradigmatic example, two people, perhaps sharing an elevator or waiting for a bus, find themselves …