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When Weather Envy Becomes Weather Rage
Raging Winds Will Gradually Subside

Andrew Freedman @ 8:49 AM

According to the Associated Press, Sally Jordan Hill, a 50-year-old nurse anesthetist, is in a North Carolina jail on murder charges stemming from the mysterious death of a patient five years ago.

Prosecutors allege that in 2001 she administered a lethal dose of painkillers to Sandra Baker Joyner, a patient who had undergone a routine face lift, and also had three names. The motive: According to investigators, Ms. Hill was angry that Joyner stole her high school boyfriend 30 years ago.

Jason Samenow's Forecast

Forecast Confidence: HighToday: Mostly sunny and breezy. Highs should range from 61-65 with west winds of 15-20mph and a few higher gusts.
Tonight: Winds should gradually subside. It will be clear and cold with lows 33-39 (suburbs-city)
Tomorrow: Mostly sunny and mild. Highs 65-70.

Check back tomorrow for Jason's week-ahead forecast.


As this story proves, jealousy is a powerful motivator. We all know what it's like to be Ms. Joyner, on the losing end of the stick.

Weather afficionados struggle with jealousy more than "normal" people. We agonize over whether another town is getting worse (or better,in our minds) weather than where we are. We curse the atmosphere for abandoning us when we miss a snowstorm and require a prescription for Zoloft if a major nor'easter fails to go according to plan.

We also claim bragging rights when the necessary ingredients come together to blitz our location with a straight-line wind event, a thundersnow extravaganza or better yet, the ever-elusive tornado.

For the weather obsessed, Mother Nature is a fickle lover who dashes our hopes and dreams with one ill-timed wind shift, one vorticity max placed too far upstream or a 20 mile shift in the "exact storm track."

I've struggled my entire life with weather envy (WE, for you acronym loving D.C. denizens). Last year I flew home to Boston to experience a forecast coastal storm because I knew how sad I'd be just watching it on The Weather Channel from a cold and dry Chicago. Well, I also went to visit my family, of course. But which was foremost in my mind when the flakes began to fly?

As a kid I lived and died by the ruthless and indiscriminate rain/snow line that plagues the coastal plain during nor'easters. It seemed that it was always snowing outside of Route 128, a narrow, traffic-plagued stretch of road forming a perimeter around the city of Boston in a similar manner as the Beltway does in D.C.. I'd stay awake all night during storms, watching my outdoor thermometer climb from the upper 20s into the mid 30s on an East wind, as six inch snowfalls turned into slushy messes. The mornings were the worst, when I found out how much snow had accumulated in towns just west of mine.

I recall more than once vowing to kill every innocent resident of Worcester, Mass. due to their far more frequent winter wallops only 40 miles away. I also once said, upon hearing the final snow totals one day, "Those people don't deserve such a good storm." I have no idea what that meant, but it was said in a fit of weather rage. It's a damn good thing I wasn't treating patients that day. Or ever.

In D.C. I was perpetually angry at Baltimore for always seeming to wind up with more snow than D.C. In the blizzard of 2003, for example, D.C. turned to sleet in the last several hours of the storm while Baltimore stayed all snow and beat the capital by about ten inches in the final tally.

I'm not planning on become an anesthetist, mostly because I can barely even spell that word, but if I do... look out. Weather grudges are just as powerful as high school romance grudges.

"Oh, you were born in Worcester, that's wonderful. Interesting city. Airport abbreviation is ORH. Great snowstorms... ok, now I want you to count backwards from 100 please. Any final words?"

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