The colors of weather

There were moments when it was really cold yesterday and I had to go home and rescue my topcoat from the hall closet. Oddly, this was some sort of magic because as soon as I took hold of the coat and covered my shoulders with it, the cold resolved itself and it wasn't nearly as cold as it had been. This was true, even when the day was dying and I would assume that the temperature was dropping. It had more to do with the wind than actual temperature. Or, to say it correctly, the temperature was affected by the wind.

Today it is supposed to start raining sometime in the afternoon and continue through tomorrow. On the weather maps, the rains are like a huge actor standing in the darkness of the wings. Practicing his lines out of sight of the audience. If you look offstage, you can see him. Going over the lines, again and again.

I have seen it when the actor offstage has come to his part and then stopped, as if stagestruck. A couple of years ago, a snow storm blew through Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama, then died as it crossed the border between Alabama and Georgia. Waiting expectantly, the front came and then nothing....

But the weather men are saying that it is inevitable. The maps show whiteness in most of the northern counties. Rain is projected for the rest of the state. Angry reds and yellows are flowing across the gulf coast, looking to rise up, latitudinally (You can use that. I don't think its a word. But it should be, if not.) and strike like a snake. Yahhh!

The weather maps show the possibility of snow as white. That makes sense. But the warning of impending snow is red. That makes no sense. If the snow is imminent, why is it red? No matter how real snow is, it is still white. The more real it becomes, it doesn't turn red. That is silly.

If there was a light white, you could use that for the possibility of snow, then use dark white for probable snow. But how are you going to create white which is light or dark. When it is white, it is white.

Even other types of frozen precipitation can appear white. Ice, sleet, hail.

Perhaps the possibility of snow should be light blue. That way if the H2O doesn't freeze, then it will be water (rain) anyway. Light blue is a good color for rain.

But not red and yellow.