Take a Weather Class

Years ago, there was a Celtic band that showed up at more local craft fairs and town festivals than the frozen lemonade people. They were called Nashville Weather because their lineup was so changeable. It’s a good band name, honestly — even if the joke behind it is a little hacky. Dads in pretty much every city make the same crack: “Don’t like the weather? Just wait five minutes.” Well, they probably don’t tell that joke in San Diego, home of the world’s most consistent weather. (I always thought it was a subtly funny bit that Brick Tamblin, Steve Carrell’s dim-witted character in Anchorman, was a San Diego weatherman — any idiot can forecast “High of 85, low of 68 and sunny” every day.) Anyway, the weather, like the tax code and the continued popularity of noise music in Murfreesboro, is something that most people hardly understand and few can do anything about, but that everyone has to deal with.

If, however, you do want to understand the complex stew that is our atmosphere — or if you’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who casually uses the word “derecho” and pedantically points out that “it’s not the heat or the humidity, y’know, it’s the dew point” — the local office of the National Weather Service is here for you. For the next two months, the meteorologists out in Old Hickory are offering a smorgasbord of online classes via GoToMeeting on everything from the basics of weather to thunderstorms, wind, quasi-convective linear systems (whatever that is) and the North American monsoon. And, yes, in December they’ll teach you about forecasting winter weather. The one-hour classes are free, but advance registration is required and available at the local office’s website nws.gov/ohx, which includes a list of classes and times. J.R. LIND