"Middle-aged women are the people most likely to watch the Weather Channel," my husband read to me from the newspaper. "Isn’t that strange?"
"Not really," I said sheepishly, as if confessing some secret desire. "I think The Weather Channel is interesting."
"Why?", my husband asked, mystified. "You can check the weather you need to know on the internet in a matter of minutes. Why watch it as entertainment?"

After prolonged musing, I think understand why the demographic of The Weather Channel might be women of a certain age. We feel intimately connected to weather. The only thing that is changing as much as we are moment-to-moment IS the weather.
Some of the changes (in weather and in us) are dramatic upheavals – tornados, hurricanes, and the like, turning everything upside down. Other changes occur over time – prolonged heat and drought desiccates and desertifies the land. We can relate to this all too well, as hot flashes singe our individual landscapes and lack of hormonal rainfall leaves us hot, parched, and dry.

Watching the weather is comforting and reassuring for this menopausal woman. While these climactic changes are sometimes uncomfortable and hard to bear, they are NORMAL. The Earth recovers from weather’s onslaughts and new growth appears. A landscape may be trashed for a time, but it ultimately rejuvenates. It may never be as it was before, but it will be fine. And so will we.