BETWEEN THE LINES: IS EL NINO REALLY TO BLAME FOR THE CHANGE IN WEATHER?

"This is a free country: if you don't like the weather where you live, you can go elsewhere and not like the weather there also."

-- Evan Esar

No matter where you are or what you do for a living, you will have a conversation about the weather at least once in your lifetime. Everyone talks about the weather, especially in early spring when planting season arrives.

When the cold air blew into town last week, plenty of people talked about how the change was going to affect flowers and plants. But I'd venture to guess that El Nino has created a greater interest in weather forecasts and predictions than ever before.

In the last few months, I have heard as many people talk about the havoc El Nino has created in South America and California as those talking about the latest presidential scandal. El Nino routinely makes an appearance on nightly newscasts because of flooding, heavy rains or blizzards along a coastline.

El Nino, a large mass of air hovering over the Pacific Ocean, has been blamed for everything from bad haircuts to increasing produce prices.

I have heard of blaming other people for your problems, but never the weather. Besides, it's not like we can exchange one day's weather for something better. You take what you get.

Remember Mother Nature, Jack Frost and Old Man Winter? They used to get the blame when the weather turned rough, but now no one seems to blame them. It sounds more sophisticated to talk about a cyclical weather phenomenon than about Old Man Winter.

But how much of an effect has El Nino really had on our weather? Nearly every year there are severe snowstorms, heavy rains, flash floods and droughts all across the planet. Is the rising Mississippi River to be blamed on El Nino and not the natural course of events?

Surely there can't be that great an effect on Southeast Missouri if the worst weather of the winter has been a few snow flurries and cold rain. Actually I missed the winter, although I'm not complaining much.

One of the strangest things about living in a warm climate during the winter months was not needing a coat. Shortly after I addressed my Christmas cards while dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, I realized a Florida winter wouldn't be anything like what I was used to in Missouri. So I packed up all my winter coats and gloves and shipped them home in early December. A light jacket suited me fine. There was hardly any frost, let alone cold temperatures along the coast where I lived.

But it apparently turned cold there recently. A friend just e-mailed me to discuss vacation plans for next month and said all the spring breakers spent last week on the beach wrapped in blankets. Temperatures didn't get much past the 30s and 40s most days, she said.

Maybe El Nino is to blame. Wouldn't you want to blame someone if your spring vacation was ruined?

I remember taking a trip to Mississippi with my family for a three-day weekend. We had plans to take a ferry to a small island and national park off the Gulf shore for a day. But those were quickly canceled when a tropical depression appeared.

Instead we spent the weekend inside a cramped cabin that smelled damp and musty. It wasn't the best vacation ever, but probably the most memorable. We didn't even have a hurricane or El Nino to blame -- just our own bad luck.

Maybe El Nino is a good thing. It makes finding an excuse so much easier when things go wrong.

~Laura Johnston is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.