My father-in-law used to answer, “Fair to partly cloudy,” when I asked how he was. By this time he was in his late 70’s and not in the best of health, but I suspect he’d been a “fair to partly cloudy” guy his whole life.
I certainly know people who spend a lot of time “Overcast,” a gray cloud hanging above their head casting deep shadows, and at the other end, from time to time, I run headlong into the “Bright and Sunny,” people so grateful and happy to be alive that they absolutely radiate. There are the “Warm but Humid” types that leave you feeling comfortable but a little clammy, those that are so “Bitter Cold” we instinctually hide our faces, and even the frightening “Hurricane Warning” from which the wise seek refuge.
Folks like metaphorical systems, ways to see themselves and others from within a specific frame-of-reference. This metaphor-making ability inclines us to personify and anthropomorphize natural objects and events, which transforms the nearly incomprehensible into more digestible form.
Accordingly, I wonder why Weather Type has not generated a best-selling self-help book about personality with a catchy title like “Great Storm Rising…What weather type are you?” It might blow off the shelves. I can envision chapters like, “Your Personality Barometer,” and “Tracking Your Emotional Rainfall.” You get the picture. There would be various personality weather-type tests, graphs, charts, statistics and discussions of “distribution curves,” maybe even a “Weather Type Score!”
And of course, every weather type needs to know how to relate to other weather types, the most perfect and the most awful match. I think an old-fashioned set of plastic dials connected at the center so that one can be rotated to determine compatibility would be nice. Instead of “What’s your sign?” we’d ask “What weather type are you?” A low and high-pressure dynamic would have to be charted, alongside the ability to predict “Unstable Conditions.” It might be that a “Mild Low Pressure System” brushing up against “Fair to Partly Cloudy” could be sexually exciting!
Naturally, the scientifically-minded will do studies to correlate personality weather types with meteorological weather types. Do the “Bright and Sunny” particularly suffer during prolonged periods of rain? Are “Cold and Windy” ones depressed by just plain “Cold?” All this will require research grants, test subjects, multi-year close-study observations, massive computer data-bases and the like. Universities will compete with each other for government money. Major multi-national corporations wanting to better understand how to maximize profits by using personality weather types will mine data and customize internet ads based on weather type “cookies” inserted into computers. In no time, Your Weather Type will be an App ready for free download to your mobile device, though an inexpensive upgrade will provide more features.
I’m a “Mostly Sunny, Light Fog in the Morning.” My “Bright and Warm Light Afternoon Showers” wife knows this all too well. I’m attracted to her; I don’t think we are a perfect match, but I suspect a perfect match could be quite boring. I can imagine how exciting life might be with a “Scattered Thunder Storm” but I don’t think I would like it for very long. Besides, sometimes when weather types mix, you get a real tornado.
