Mark Twain on Weather Department of Meteorology University of California Los Angeles, Calif
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G. L. Siscoe Mark Twain on Weather Department of Meteorology University of California Los Angeles, Calif. 90024 and Center for Space Research Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass. 02139 'You say you don't like it? . Well, just wait a minute. When you read what Samuel Clemens has to say about The following compilation of quotes by Clemens shows Weather, you know that the subject was special to what a humorist and literary giant with an interest in him. His unique talents of imagery and humor applied the subject can do with standard weather topics. to Weather produced some of his best verbal perform- Judged solely by the volume of material, Clemens' ances. Her variety and caprice seemed to stimulate his primary interest in weather must have been climates. imagination and challenge him. The resulting literary He wrote about good climates, bad climates, and about product satisfied him enough to use the subject often. climatic curiosities that puzzled him. There was one His comments were numerous, his personal observations place with a climate rich enough to inspire an entire insightful and accurate, and he was obviously well- speech: New England. informed. In his mostly humorous but sometimes reverent style, There is a sumptuous variety about the New England wea- ther that compels the stranger's admiration—and regret. he remarked on the World's climates, on wind systems The weather is always doing something there; always at- both global and local, and on storms and floods. Barom- tending strictly to business; always getting up new designs eters and lightning rods made subjects for humorous and trying them on the people to see how they will go. yarns. Occasionally, he was serious and evoked deeper But it gets through more business in spring than in any emotions as, for example, when describing a violent other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and storm or sublime skyscape. thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and He experienced different climates and weather phe- twenty hours.1 nomena during a lifetime of travel. As a Mississippi river boat pilot in his youth, around the time of the Civil There is a well-known big difference in the east and War, he had a personal interest in the storms and west coast climates. The contrast is made clear by com- floods that affected the river. After the war, he went paring the above with the following description of the West with his brother in a stagecoach. Of course the climate in San Francisco. coach was not air conditioned and he acquired a real During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies familiarity with The Great American Desert. While in are bright and cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. the west, he learned about Chinook winds in Nevada, But when the other four months come along, you will need about invigorating, health-giving mountain air around to go and steal an umbrella. Bceause you will require it. Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days in hardly Lake Tahoe, about monotonous seasons in San Fran- varying succession. When you want to go visiting or at- cisco, and about the not-so-pacific Pacific on trips to tend church, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds Hawaii. He returned to the East and settled in New to see whether it is likely to rain or not—you look at the York and Connecticut. From there he made a trip to the almanac. If it is Winter, it will rain—and if it is Summer, Holy Land and many trips to Europe. His accounts of it won't rain, and you cannot help it.2 these journeys were filled largely with history, customs, and scenery, with occasional references to the weather. The above two quotes illustrate large differences in However, weather was a major topic in his description climates at locations with approximately the same lati- of a "round-the-world" equatorial tour to the Pacific Is- tude. As we now know, the reason is the different dis- lands, New Zealand, Australia, India, and Africa. This tribution of continents and oceans with respect to these was his last major excursion. The records of his travels two cities. The effects of continents and oceans on in correspondence to newspapers and in five books are climate was not known to Clemens, and he was puzzled the main sources for this article, but also his speeches by the differences in climates at places with the same and short stories were used. latitude. * I have been unable to establish that this quote concern- If the climates of the world were determined by parallels ing New England weather is actually by Clemens. Some say of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by its posi- it was by Benjamin Franklin and others think it was by a tion on the map and so we should know that the climate friend of Clemens. All seem to agree that it could have been of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia, by Clemens. S.C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the 4 Vol. 55, No. 1, January 1974 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/05/21 11:55 AM UTC Bulletin American Meteorological Society same distance south of the equator that those other towns perfect." 10 For, as he noted, although the temperature are north of it—thirty-four degrees. But no, climate dis- was around 100° when he was there, the exceeding dry- regards the parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a ness of the air prevented discomfort. He made a fairly winter; in Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself. You could cut up an Arkansas winter into accurate summary of Australian climate generally. a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas . Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier and the poor.s in the case of Australia than usual. Apparently this vast However, that climates should differ at locations sepa- continent has a really good climate nowhere but around rated in latitude did not puzzle him at all. In fact he felt the edges.n very safe in attacking the apparent ignorance of New To Clemens, Australia was a hot continent. He wrote England journalists on this topic. a poem entitled "A Sweltering Day in Australia" 12 to It is only natural that there should be a sharp difference emphasize his feeling. But it was the heat in India that between climates which lie upon parallels of latitude which inspired an exaggeration. are one or two thousand miles apart. I take this position, It is a common expression there, "the cold weather," and and I will hold it and maintain it in spite of the news- the people think there is such a thing. It is because they have papers. The newspaper thinks it isn't a natural thing; and lived there half a lifetime, and their perceptions have be- once a year, in February, it remarks, with ill-concealed ex- come blunted. When a person is accustomed to 138 in the clamation points, that while we, away up here are fighting shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable. snow and ice, folks are having new strawberries and peas As long as those men [in India] were talking about what down South: callas are blooming out of doors, and the they knew, they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but people are complaining of the warm weather. The news- when they said it was now "cold weather," I saw that they paper never gets done being surprised about it. It is caught had traveled outside of their sphere of knowledge and were regularly every February.4 floundering. I believe that in India "cold weather" is merely He had encounters with warm climates, both desert a conventional phrase and has come into use through the and tropical. He traveled on horseback in Syria 5 and necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which found it "terrible," but considered the American desert will only make it mushy. 13 worse. The stagecoach trip from Missouri to Nevada was his first contact with desert climate, and it obviously Although they are a minority, good climates were impressed him. also mentioned by Clemens. In addition to the "perfect" At four P.M. we had doubled our distance and were climate around Adelaide, he found that the weather in ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we South Africa's June winter was delightful. entered upon one of that species of deserts whose concen- . the depth of the sky, and the beauty of the strange trated hideousness shames the diffused and diluted horrors new cloud-forms, and the glory of the sunshine, the lavish- of Sahara—an "alkali" desert.® ness, the wastefulness of it.14 The sun beats down with dead, blistering relentless malig- nity; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and However, South Africa's large diurnal temperature range beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface— tempered his delight, as evidenced by this entry in his it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest diary: breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Half-hour after sun- visible in any direction whither one searches the blank set one needed a spring over-coat; by 8 a winter one.1^ level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound—not a sign—not a whisper—not a buzz; We close this subject with another example of a good or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob climate.