Weather is Universal

When my mind goes blank and I can't think of anything else, I find nobody minds if we use that couple of minutes when everyone is joining a call to talk about the weather.  

Right now, some of the people in my calls are in Michigan, Texas, Florida, and Ireland.  Just discussing the daily high temperature is entertaining.  During the recent polar vortex, when the high was -17 Fahrenheit in Ann Arbor, I asked "when you used to drive to the office and it was this cold did you have trouble starting your car to go home?"  Who knew? People used to leave the office at lunchtime just to start their cars, to make it more likely the car would start at the end of the day.   

My best memory of weather chit-chat was years ago, on a co-ordination call between teammates in India and teammates in Massachusetts.  

It was a bitterly cold day in Massachusetts.  Not as cold as Ann Arbor, but still one of those days when you are relieved that your car started, and that you found your warmest gloves. A day when you had to let the car warm up for 20 minutes before you drove into the office because the frost on the windshield was impossible to remove without risking frostbite.    Not surprisingly, a few people were late getting into the office to join our co-ordination call. 

I explained to the folks in India why we were straggling in, and one of them asked "How cold is it?"   

"It was minus 6 when I left the house this morning. It's up to 2 degrees now. That's in Fahrenheit"

There was a pause while we all tried to remember how to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius.  

We knew our colleagues in India had finished the calculation because we heard an audible gasp, and a rush of animated chatter.  After a few moments, one person said in shock "You are all going to die!"  And he meant it too.  He could not fathom how we could do anything outside in -21 degree Celsius weather!   We had to take a few minutes to explain how it was possible to not die.

There's a reason we all talk about the weather so much -- it really is interesting!   Especially when it is radically different than our own.