Don’t Like the Weather? Just Wait…

Don’t Like the Weather? Just Wait…

Dad Said it Best
Age-Old Truths for Modern Times
By Estelle Rodis-Brown

If You Don’t Like Our Weather, Just Wait a Few Days

As I write at my computer by the roaring wood stove, it’s the fifth or sixth day — I’ve lost count — of dreary, wet, bone-chilling days that melt into the darkest of nights before suppertime.

It’s hard to believe that, just last week, we were enjoying a long string of luminous, dazzling, sunny, warm days that felt more like late September than early November. But this week, we’ve been thrust into what feels like a never-ending slurry of the dreaded wintry mix. Not long after we turned back the clocks and swapped out long, sun-drenched days for short, cloudy windows of pale gray, the days drag on like a column of tarnished tin soldiers marching in single file for as far as the eye can see.

My only consolation is that someday soon, the weather will likely shift again, just as suddenly.

If you don’t like our weather, just wait a few days. My Dad — and everyone else’s — likely repeated some version of this refrain in every season due to the fickle weather in Northeast Ohio. Its dramatic unpredictability causes us to complain but I suppose it’s also the secret sauce that keeps things from getting boring around here. The much-maligned lake effect keeps us on our toes and won’t let us become complacent.

While there’s some argument that Mark Twain or Will Rogers coined the phrase in reference to weather in New England and/or Michigan or Oklahoma, local history tells us that a Portsmouth, Ohio newspaper article in 1926 reported, “A new ‘snappy comeback’ is being offered by Clevelanders to visitors who have complained of erratic weather conditions in the vicinity during the past winter. It is: ‘If you don’t like the Cleveland weather, wait a minute.’”

It’s been part of this region’s self-deprecating humor since before The Mistake on the Lake or The Rust Belt came into the vernacular. Now our area is commonly lumped into the flyover region since tourists bypass us as they jet-set between the East and West coasts. But for those who have actually touched down on our North Coast, they are pleasantly surprised. And maybe it would be good for the rest of us to consider flipping the script of our perceptions of this place called home. 

Even the Los Angeles Times published an article in 2017 declaring that “Cleveland is on the cusp of cool.” And this was not a weather reference.

Back to the weather: This may surprise you, but some longtime Northeast Ohio residents who try on retirement down South complain that all the perfect, sunny days run together in such monotony that they can’t appreciate heaven on earth anymore.

“There are only so many line dance parties and pool potlucks you can attend before it all gets too predictable,” says my cousin, who bought a condo at The Villages in Florida but has chosen to rent it out “because it’s too God-awful hot to even step outside most of the time.”

So, yes, it’s cold outside. A lake effect snow warning has been issued for the Snow Belt today —parts of Northeast Ohio got thundersnow overnight and woke up this morning to over a foot of the white stuff while others of us got just a dusting and a winter weather advisory going forward—  just in time for holiday travelers to question if it’s really worth it to go over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house this festive season.

Over the river and through the woods,
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.

Then again, wait a few days. The weather forecast will likely change again.

About the author

Estelle Rodis-Brown is a freelance writer and photographer from Portage County who serves as digital/associate editor of Northeast Ohio Thrive and Walden Life magazines. In her Dad Said it Best blog, she shares how memories of her upbringing provide wisdom for modern life.

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