Living in the Midwest never serves as an easy task, especially with weather that keeps everyone wondering whether to slip on the flip-flops or lace up the snow boots.
Maryville, being in the northern region of the state, gets some crazy weather when the two fronts that hover over the Midwest start to do work. Geology instructor Jeff Bradley knows better than most, the reason for Maryville’s extreme highs and lows.
“We’re in the perfect area geographically when those fronts start mixing,” Bradley said. “Warm, humid air comes in from the south occasionally and then a few days later you get cold, dryer air coming in from Canada.”
According to Bradley, these fronts cross over Maryville about once a week. He defines a weather front as a boundary between two different air masses, warm humid air on one side and cold dryer air on the other.
There are some people, like freshman Kristopher Thomas, who cannot get used to Missouri’s somewhat weird climate changes.
“I’m from Houston so I’m not used to this cold,” Thomas said. “Ever since I’ve been here, people have said if you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes and it’ll change.”
Although it is not quite that extreme, climates can drastically change from week to week and sometimes even day to day. To others who are Missouri natives, the drastic change in weather is no big deal. Freshman Ryan Robertson said he’s used to it because he has lived in Missouri all his life.
“The fact that it’s warm and then cold and then warm is actually pretty normal,” Bradley said. “It would be more unusual if it just stayed cold the whole time in the winter.”
Bradley likes to tell his classes that it’s kind of like we’re on a weather roller coaster with snow one day and rain the next. But like he said, to an extent that is normal.
Though Maryville has been known to get extremely cold weather, of late it has been a bit out of the ordinary.
“It’s been a little bit more extreme than normal but nothing drastically off base,” Bradley said.
He said Nodaway County normally gets an average of two feet of snow for the entire winter season. So far the snow has stacked up close to three feet and he says there is still six to eight weeks to go.
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