This has been one great run of beautiful weather, but we Minnesotans know it won’t last.
So, I wanted to get us ready for the inevitable change of seasons with a review of a few meteorological terms and conditions that dot weather reports throughout the year.
And since my scientific knowledge is far from advanced, I’m going for just the basics and — just for fun — a sampler of song titles that contain weather terms. (There must be hundreds, so I limited every category to only one to three, but feel free to add your favorites in the Comment section below.)
Temperatures
• Hot: Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime”
• Cold: The Pixies Three with “Cold, Cold Winter” and Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice”
• Warm: Connie Francis’ “I’m Gonna Be Warm This Winter”
• Cool: The Fabulous Wailers’ “Tall Cool One”
Wide-ranging weather conditions
• Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”
• Chi Coltrane’s “Thunder and Lightning”
• Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes”
• The Classics IV’s “Stormy”
• The Murmaids’ “Popsicles and Icicles”
Rainy weather
• The Sir Douglas Quintet’s “The Rains Came”
• Jane Morgan’s “The Day That the Rains Came”
• Dinah Washington’s “September in the Rain”
Sky conditions
• Barry McGuire’s “Cloudy Summer Afternoon” and Simon Garfunkel’s “Cloudy,” including the great lyrics:
“Cloudy
My thoughts are scattered and they’re cloudy,
They have no borders, no boundaries.
They echo and they swell
From Tolstoy to Tinker Bell.
Down from Berkeley to Carmel …”
• Hoagy Carmichael’s “Ole Buttermilk Sky”
High winds
• Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” and Glenn Yarbrough’s “The Honey Wind Blows”
Sunshine songs
• The Rivieras’ “California Sun”
• Ray Charles’ astounding “You Are My Sunshine”
• Tommy Edwards’ mellow “Please Mr. Sun”
Winter weather
And I’ve saved the worst for last with our long-range forecast: winter. Here are two sad songs of that season — first, a clever, quintessential teen’s-lost-love lament, and then an absolute tear-jerker:
• Diane Ray’s “Snow Man”
• And then Gentleman Jim Reeves’ heartbreaking “The Blizzard.”
