Wind is awful.
This mostly goes for places where it gets cold, and there are specific exceptions – I’m not talking a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day here.
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It’s winter. You check the temperature – freezing cold but manageable. You step out, fully bundled. So far, so good. But wait! A massive gust of wind blasts you in the face, turning mild discomfort into complete misery, and effectively ruining your life.
It’s nearly spring. You’re trying to enjoy the false hope that this mild day will transition smoothly into warmer weather without being pulled back by winter’s long, frigid fingers. Lo! A cold wind picks up, makes your eyes water – a bully mocking you for naively foregoing that extra layer you considered.
It’s summer. Unless you’re flying a kite, windsurfing, or otherwise doing some specifically wind-related activity, the wind is mostly annoying as fuck. It blows your picnic items over/away, it thunders in your ears.
It’s fall. Basically like spring but the other way around. The wind spitefully reminds you winter is coming again.
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The adverse physical and mental effects of wind have long been anecdotally and folklorically documented, but several scientific studies have also shown a correlation between wind and hypertension and negative mood – even increases in murder rates. From Lyall Watson’s Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind:
“In 1968, Willis Miller of California Western University, collected statistics for homicides in Los Angeles county and compared them with weather records. There were 53 days during 1964 and 1965 when the Santa Ana blew and humidity, which is normally around 43 percent, fell below 15 percent. On 34 of those 53 windy days, there were more deaths than normal. And during the longest sustained Santa Ana, which blew from October 20th to 26th in 1965, the total was 47 percent higher than in any other windless week…In California’s early, and to this extent more enlightened days, defendants in crimes of passion were able to plead for leniency, citing the wind as an extenuating circumstance.”
