A hot place getting strangely cold – as with the current situation in the south and central United States, and especially in Texas – is always the cue for some cold-weather people to performatively refuse their sentence. “Growing up in Minnesota, we ran out of power for a week in a row … Suck the Texans,” a tweet he was. “Welcome to all winters in the northeast”, offered another. “Texas needs to pull its wool socks up, suck it and skate it,” it was a third.
This weather web, if not clear, is not a good look. The dramatic cold spell has already left millions of people without power, and some homes are also boiling as their water treatment plants have been shut down. At the time of writing, 23 people have died and, although temperatures rise by the end of the week, starting on Tuesday, authorities cannot say when the power will be restored. In light of this misery, Twitter user @zzzsartorialist expressed it best: “Texas is literally a humid subtropical climate most of the time, please keep your strange cold outlets for yourself. “
Mocking other places for being “soft” in the face of bad weather that seems normal to us is an established form of American humor. We are a large country with many different regions, and each has its own types of bad weather; in the past, it was good to laugh softly at each other – to consolidate a regional identity, in what appears to be an apolitical form. As a person raised in New Hampshire, I know the fun of being a person who boasts of the cold. I had a few years when I used to delight in irritating friends with our irritating tribal maxims of the cold person, like “Cotton kills!” and “There is no bad weather, just bad clothes!”
But I think it’s time for the “strange cold shots” to stop. In fact, I am happy to see them outnumbered, in volume, by people who recognize this situation for what it is: deeply disturbing and dangerous, and certainly not a crisis that a person can survive with a more resistant attitude. As climate change – which, some think, is behind the very cold air blowing in the South now – continues, a strange and extreme climate is going to happen to many people who are not prepared. The lack of this preparation is no longer funny, if it ever was.
In addition, it is important to note that preparation – as people who have decided not to seek isolation from Texas wind turbines know very well – is not just a type of moral choice. This comes at a cost. Now I live in a much more borderline climate, where some winters (like this one) deserve ample clothing, while you could go through others with a low waistcoat and a little luck. A pandemic snow winter with a 4 year old child means that we had to invest in a better winter kit for each member of the family this year. When you add the cost of long performance underwear, jackets, snow pants, weather-resistant gloves, Yaktrax, boots, hats, scarves and woolen socks and multiply it by three, it’s no small matter. Then, you need to store the equipment in the spring and ensure that in the fall the child (or anyone else whose body has changed in size!) Has not grown during the summer.
These are the things my parents in New Hampshire normally do, as well as isolating their home, paying someone (who in turn maintains a plow) to clean the driveway and maintaining a supply of firewood for their oven. But they chose to live in New Hampshire; people in Texas … no.
For what it’s worth, there’s also something historically frightening about cold-weather people indulging in superior feelings around the weather. The idea that the cold creates better, smarter and more industrious human beings was spread among 19º and 20 yearsº social Darwinists of the century. The eugenicist and racist Madison Grant wrote in 1922 that he suspected that the personal qualities he admired among the “Nordics” – “vigor and power” – arose because they lived in the cold: “The climatic conditions have been such that they impose a strict elimination of through harsh winters and the need for industry and provision of food, clothing and shelter during the short summer ”. Talk about a strange cold shot!
Without a doubt, there is a good sense of self-confidence in being totally ready for the cold. I personally find it extremely satisfying to walk outdoors with technological equipment from head to toe, isolated from the elements like an astronaut on the moon. But, my cold companions: for a situation like that of Texas, we will not allow memories of our own snowy and difficult times to flood our sympathy for all the people who live in homes without insulation and without heating. With climate change on the rise, Mother Nature is coming for us all, soon.