ON TUESDAY, Emporians were in shirtsleeves, basking the sunshine. On Thursday, they were bundled to the eyes, trudging into the teeth of a blizzard.
There is certainly a scientific explanation for the quick change in the weather, with charts, graphs and a few quick classes in meteorology, but that doesn’t make the sudden fall into the deep freeze any easier to take.
As the old joke says, if you don’t like the weather in Kansas, wait five minutes.
Heck, what’s a 50-degree drop in 48 hours? In North Dakota, where the unofficial state motto is “Forty below keeps out the riffraff,” commenting on a little blizzard and temperatures still above zero would be considered downright childish.
But Kansans have an excuse. To begin with, they have never had to develop the half-inch rind of dead, chapped skin that protects our northern neighbors. People in the Sunflower State still have live nerve endings close to the body’s surface and are alert and alive to the smallest variations in the surrounding climate.
Kansans are not fragile, just sensitive to the outside world.
And Kansans are not complainers, but observers.
In a less stalwart state, a comment such as, “Boy, it’s cold out there,” might be considered craven complaint. In Kansas this week, it was just factual reporting.
Kansans call ’em as they see ’em.
Boy, it was cold out there.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor