I’m from Oklahoma. Let me give you an overview of our seasons, beginning with

Spring: Starts mild, ends warm. Thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, and flooding are the main stories here.

Summer: Hot and muggy throughout. No clouds, rain, wind, relief. All you can do is make your clothes wet. Sometimes, I just point a leaf blower up my shirt. And at my testicles. I take cold showers all summer. It’s about the only way I can cool down enough to get some sleep.

Autumn: It’s like spring, but in reverse. Thunderstorms and tornadoes do happen, but rarely are they strong.

And finally - Winter: Nothing happens in a typical winter. It might snow a couple times in Central OK. And that’s really it. Once or twice every decade, we might get a historic winter storm. But most years are super uneventful and mild. It freezes most nights in deep winter, but only just.

In short, all four seasons are trying to kill you, but winter isn’t trying that hard. Spring and autumn are briefly nice. The average temperature might be 72, but what’s being left out is that it could be 91 on Monday, 49 on Wednesday, and 87 on Saturday. Or it could be between 65 and 75 all week. You never truly know until you get there.

At least it’s not, say, Iowa. I know for a fact their summers are almost as hot as ours, but their winters are waaaaaayyyyy colder.

I’ve tried to tell my wife many times that it is just as hot and humid here as it is where she’s from in Mississippi. Dew point is dew point, no matter where you are. It’s just that the humidity here goes away sooner and stays away for longer. And we don’t typically get tornadoes on Thanksgiving or Christmas. The southeast definitely does.

Anyway, we vacationed in Seattle last September, and - cost of living be damned - now I want to live there. If not for the weather, then at least for the seafood. But I love my nieces and nephews too much to be that far from them.