Weather Words

I was driving home from shopping at the big box store with my kids, tall guy and mr. impatient, when it started to rain.  First it was just sprinkling, and then it started pouring.  Before you know it, we were having a real “gully washer” (as a friend of mine from Texas used to say).

That got me thinking.  Earlier I had said that it was really windy.  I had even teased the boys by singing a few bars of the song by the same name from the late 60’s.  They didn’t think I was funny.

A while later I commented on how hard it was to breathe because it was so humid.  I remember using the expression “muggy” when I was a kid for that kind of weather.  I think they call it “close” in the South. 

I was thinking about the many words for snow.  Someone once told me that the Eskimos had hundreds of different words for various winter snow conditions.  So I decided to check.   Not so.  If we are talking about the Inuit people in North America, they have 9 - 15 words for snow, depending on which article you believe.  I was crushed.

The Sami people (from Scandinavia, often called Laplanders) actually have hundreds of words for snow and snowy conditions.  So the myth has some basis in fact.

And, FYI, according to Wikipedia:

“The seven most common English words for snow are snow, hail, sleet, ice, icicle, slush, and snowflake. English also has the related word glacier and the four common skiing terms pack, powder, crud, and crust, so one can say that at least 12 distinct words for snow exist in English.”

CRUD????

You learn something new every day.