“Wonderful weather we’re having huh?” is probably the most boring, neutral topic you can have when talking with a stranger.

However, if you’ve lived in the state of Oklahoma for any period of time, you know that the weather can seem as random as a dice roll. The weather here in the Sooner State never seems like a dull topic. When it took us until February to have one full week of classes, you know that something is off with the weather.

I remember one time when I was younger, it was about 70 degrees on the weekend, and by the start of the week, I was shoveling snow off of my driveway. This trend of flip-flop weather (not the kind of flip-flops you wear) seems to be the norm here. It can be 75 degrees one week, and the next week, we are ice skating to class and building snowmen.

When talking with one of my international friends, they told me that summer was their favorite season, and looked shocked when I said fall was my favorite season.

My question to them was “have you spent a summer here?” If you live here, you know how our summers go. It will usually be two straight weeks of 100 degree plus without a cloud in sight. Then a storm will come and dump rain on us for a day or two, and then leave. Then it’s right back to the good old heat dome. It gets so hot you can bake cookies in your car and fry eggs on the street (although I would not recommend eating that). Let us not forget our dear friends the mosquitos, who come to enjoy our evening activities with us and have a nice little drink, if you don’t swat them away fast enough.

I say fall is my favorite season because it’s the only time of year we have normal temperatures, it seems like. The trees are pretty, and the football teams are playing in the city. Fall has always been my favorite time of the year.

By the time the trimester comes to an end in the spring, we will be entering the heart of tornado season. Rain, dark clouds, and the news channel all day broadcasting wall clouds and tornado warnings.

Tornadoes and Oklahoma go hand-in-hand, just like peanut butter and jelly. Oklahoma is home to the widest tornado ever recorded (the El Reno Tornado in 2013, with a width of 2.6 miles) and the fastest wind speed ever recorded (the 1999 Bridge Creek tornado) with a wind speed of 301 mph. Even though it’s dangerous weather, there’s just something about hearing “golf-ball-size hail” on channel 4 that makes me like that time of year too.

So, if you are an international student living here in Oklahoma for the first time or you’re from another part of the country, you get to experience truly what kind of whack weather we can have here.

“Wonderful weather we’re having huh?” someone might ask me. To that I would reply “Yes, very wonderful weather we’re having.”

Paul Tointigh is a third-year Communication major at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.