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Sunday, September 16, 2012

If You Don't Like The Weather, Trade With Someone Else

There is a saying in Wisconsin that goes "If you don't like the weather in Wisconsin, wait five minutes; it'll change."

Some of you are now wondering why we stole your phrase. Or why you stole it from us. Or why we all stole it from Mark Twain, who in its original form was referring to New England.

Here's a basic fact of weather: it changes. All the time, everywhere. Even in places that have a pretty stable climate- San Francisco, perhaps- it still gets sunny and cloudy and rainy and foggy and the temperature does still fluctuate to some degree.

What appears to be the chief criteria for gaining this phrase is that the location has the following two weather phenomena:

1) Sometimes it rains.
2) But sometimes, it doesn't rain.

So let's just clear this up now. What follows is a list of every location I was able to track down that has used the magic words (or slightly altered the time period) to describe their area, in alphabetical order. This is absolutely an incomplete list. At some point I just had to stop.

Alaska
Alberta, Canada
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Arizona
Auckland, New Zealand
Bangkok, Thailand
Beijing, China
Boquete, Panama
British Columbia, Canada
Chicago, IL
Colorado
Delaware
Denmark
Ecuador
Faroe Islands
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Iceland
Idaho
Indiana 
Innsbruck, Austria
Iowa
Ireland
Kansas
Kentucky
Little Rock, AR
Los Angeles, CA (with a 'drive five miles' variation)
Machu Picchu, Peru 
Manitoba, Canada
Maritime Provinces, Canada
Melbourne, Australia
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri 
Montana
Nanjing, China
Nevada (someone has actually invoked this on Las Vegas, contrary to everything known to man about Las Vegas' actual climate, and gotten 3,483 likes on Facebook over it)
New England
New Orleans, LA
New York 
Norway
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Outer Banks, NC 
Patagonia, Argentina 
Pennsylvania
Poland
Mitt Romney... no, he is not a location, but the joke's been used on him too, so in he goes
San Francisco, CA
Saskatchewan, Canada
Seattle, WA
South Dakota 
Spokane, WA
Tennessee
Texas
United Kingdom
Utah
West Virginia
Wisconsin 
Wyoming

If I have missed your home region and you have seen the phrase used as well... for God's sake, get a new saying.

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