In early internet days—and in those bygone days of course we had to connect through smoke signals, which was particularly tricky since most places had already banned smoking—I downloaded a weather app. But it was laden with unpleasant popup ads and I hated it. When I tried to delete the app (not named anything like “AtmosphericConditionsInsect,”) a popup warned if I removed it, my children’s lives were at risk. I presume the app’s advertising department (or whoever) thought this would inspire in me a desire, even a lust, to keep the app. It did not. 

Today TV weatherpeople are constantly, perkily announcing that “You can check your weather anytime, just by going to our website or our always on 24-hour cable channel! ” 

Or, in my case, moving my eyes about three degrees to the left to look out the window. Though I might have to tilt my chin up, too. 

We were at the beach. According to my weather app, the temperature was 81, the real feel was 84 and the heat index was 87. So I had no idea how hot it really was. 

At least the app didn’t throw degree days at me. Or dewpoint. 

I can’t tell you how sunny it was because the new light/brightness intensity index wasn’t up and running online then. According to its website it is going to revolutionize weather reporting and probably save lives. Instead of cloudy, the site will say “overcast, which is much more meaningful,” or at least more trademarkable.

The index’s other meaningful categories are: Darkish grey/slate grey/dull/dim/medium/light/rather bright/bright/very bright/Brilliant.

Up until now I hadn’t felt the need for varieties for grey or brilliant. I’m more of a “hat, or not hat?” sort. 

The answer is almost always “hat.” My eyes are sensitive to light. In all my childhood pictures I look bratty, because the light made me squint and scowl, and because I was pretty bratty. Looking at family photo albums, my mom said sadly, “Why didn’t we just get you sunglasses?”

Even without the brightness intensity index, I somehow intuited the day was bright and sunny, with some charming fluffy clouds occasionally drifting between us and the sun. I needed both my sunglasses and my extra-big hat. 

When I ordered the hat online, I had thought it was the same size as the one I had lost in the woods the previous fall. But instead of that hat’s small, extremely flattering brim, the new hat’s brim was huge and stiff. I cannot even get into the car without bumping it on the seat behind me.

I did find the old hat again in the spring, barely worse for wear. I had secretly hoped it would reappear jauntily perched on a bear’s head, but it was just tangled in the brambles. (Check out Johnny Flynn - Detectorists Original soundtrack from the TV series, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q58Gm18-IMY.)

Back at the brightness index, its website proclaims “The addition of this new index, developed over many years, adds to… [our] many significant innovations that have saved over 10,000 lives and prevented injury and harm to over 100,000 people.”

Which I admit is impressive as heck. 

But how did they come up with those numbers? Really gotta wonder ‘bout that. 

And I did not know whether the awesome roiling cloud shelf moving in from the west, like an invading army cresting a hill, was slate grey or dark grey, or why that would matter. The wind was picking up quickly with brief strong gusts, making my trip back to our rental four blocks away feel like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz” trying to reach home in the beginnings of a tornado, the beach chair slung on my back threatening to act as a sail and hang-glide me over the rainbow.

Someone, somewhere, decided “dull” was a degree duller than “dim,” which itself was some degrees dimmer than “medium”—perhaps even more challenging than deciding the levels on a blender, that pulse was pulsier than puree, and puree was less than pulverize. 

Sadly, in the light and bright index someone just got bored when they passed medium and left us only with “light, rather bright, bright, very bright.” Rather. Indeed.

(P.S. Find “About the Weather” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ1EXwT1wJQ.)