Ranking the best types of weather: A personal list

In Oklahoma City, it will be 55 degrees today. Tomorrow, it might as well be a billion below zero.

Winter has finally arrived in the Southern Plains, and it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. To our north, Wichita is getting it on Saturday night. There’s even a winter storm warning for the area, a swath of middle America traversing all the way to the East Coast.

It’s gross.

Although, to be transparent, I beg for crisp, cold air in the summer heat. Like many of you, I simply hate whatever is happening now. Mostly.

In reality, there is weather I actually like, and I thought I’d rank them today because, well, anything can become a list.

These are in no particular order.

1. 1 — Chamber of Commerce weather. You know the kind. It’s 74, and the bluest of blue skies permeate the aboveness. No wind.
   
   One of the things about this ranking is that wind, generally, sucks. Or it blows. Either way, wind is awful. Yes, I know I live in Oklahoma.
   
   The wind is not the same thing as a breeze, however. More later.
   
2. 2 — Storms are brewin’! It’s low-to-mid 80s, not too hot. The clouds are turning into vertically blooming anvils in the sky, and you can feel a cool breeze cutting through what had been a humid start to the day.
   
   This is perfect lawn-mowing weather.
   
   This is perfect cold beer weather, punctuated as “col’beer.” You do not pronounce the ‘d,’ and the accent is on the ‘col.’
   
3. 3 — Snow with no ice when you drive a Subaru.
   
   Having been in the local TV news business most of the past two decades, bad weather has meant I need to work. Now that I can enjoy the weather, if I choose to do so, I can admit that I kind of love driving in snow.
   
   Driving on ice is something nobody is truly capable of.
   
   However, with the high bottom of a Subaru Outback or Forester, one can navigate a beautiful snowfall with ease, better than many bigger vehicles.
   
4. 4 — Hoodie weather. We don’t get nearly enough of this in Oklahoma if I’m being honest. We used to, but now we go from oppressively hot to cold with a dash of 30 mph wind.
   
   Hoodie weather comes with a smell, and that smell is burning wood.
   
   Hoodie weather comes with a Friday night high school football game.
   
   Hoodie weather comes with a hayride, or sitting around a chiminea drinking beers.
   
   Hoodie weather comes with a trip to somewhere like Talimena Drive with your sweetie.

And then there’s a No. 5, and I think this is the best weather of them all.

5 — Beach weather. I’ve been to the beach in Oregon when it’s been a blustery 60 degrees. We sat on a beach in Santa Monica when it was just a tad warmer.

We’ve spent many summers in Alabama in the crushing heat of summer.

We even went to Galveston in early March one year.

It never matters what the weather is when you’re at the beach because by definition, it’s ‘beach weather.’

And it’s magnificent. Always.

Everything else: (imagine an aggressive teenager sigh).