Boston’s Having a Heat Wave, Claims Insane Maine Resident

A Maine person, probably. Man in snow photo via Shutterstock

The way Maine people mock the complaints of us Boston residents during cold snaps like this week’s reveals a trusim about how we discuss weather: Americans tend to act weirdly proud of their region’s least attractive climate quirks. Take Maine. In a fun Boston Globe feature today, reporter Billy Baker goes to East Millinocket, where the temperature dropped into double-digit negatives this week. Residents told Baker infuriating things like “It was only -15 this morning, with a 15 or 20 mile-per-hour wind. It doesn’t get cold like it used to.” Or, describing the weather in Boston, “We call that a heat wave.”

What to think of these mildly demented northern folk? Should we feel bad about the scorn they’re throwing our way? Do we want the weird genetic mutations that allow them to consider -15 degrees reasonable? No. You can keep your cold weather, Maine. 

It isn’t just them. Remember when the ground quaked beneath our feet for a terrifying two seconds back in October? (That 4.0 magnitude earthquake originated in southern Maine, by the way.) Remember the smug satisfaction on the faces of every west coast transplant to Boston that next day? “That was nothing,” they’d say. “Oh, was there an earthquake? I guess I didn’t feel it.” Do we want to be so hardened by the ever-present threat of being shaken to death that we consider a slight termor to be a total non-event? Again, no. You can keep your fault line, California.

Boston, as it turns out, is a pretty mild climate. We get a taste of the extremes: hurricanes make their way up here now and then, heat waves come in summer, horrid cold waves stop the Green Line in its tracks every winter. But no matter the weather event, there’ll always be some place in the world where it is worse. We’re not complaining…

… except to say that this is the worst heat wave ever.