All of you “Greenvillians” or probably any South Carolinian knows that the weather here is about as constant as a junior high dating relationship (and those of you from elsewhere are quickly learning this fact).

Sometime last semester, an artistic friend of mine started drawing me a picture on a 4-by-6 card to catalog every time Greenville experiences some extraordinarily random weather. There was the day it almost snowed (i.e., sleet that encased my car in an icy tomb), the day it actually snowed — while it was 45 degrees outside, the “tornado” day, and the day it snowed on Valentine’s Day.

Perhaps this year we can blame the fickle weather on the groundhog confusion up in Pittsburgh, Pa. Apparently, a lawyer in Ohio filed charges (in jest) against the famous groundhog “Punxsutawney Phil,” because he made the wrong weather prediction. It gets even weirder because Phil’s owner, Bill Deeley, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle, took the blame. A news article reported that Phil had actually predicted six more weeks of winter instead of an early spring, but Deeley failed to “interpret Phil’s ‘groundhog-ese’” correctly.

So maybe the frigid weather that hijacked most of Greenville’s spring is just a translation error. I think what scares me the most is that some people might actually believe this stuff.

Personally, I don’t mind the fickle weather so much, if only for the simple reason that it makes for a great conversation starter or filler for awkward lulls in conversation. Just think — you might never talk to some people if the weather was always the same! (Sad but probably true.)

Here at BJU especially, the weather makes up most of the conversations we have with chapel buddies, the people we sit next to in class or the person we’re stuck next to in the lunch line. Often the teachers start off the class period with some comment about how nice or awful the weather is, and I also find that even when I’m with my closest friends, somehow the weather still comes up as a topic.

The weather is changing again now and growing much warmer and nicer. Here in South Carolina it will soon spike to the high 90s (plus humidity for effect). But at least at that point everyone can enjoy the “normal” weather back home for the summer. So enjoy your summer (or winter if you’re from certain parts of Africa, Australia, etc.). And if you come back next semester, tune in for Greenville’s next soap opera season of the changing weather. Maybe I’ll even get some more 4-by-6 sketches.