The Unbearable Weight of Displaced Weather

Abstract

Weather is everywhere; there is nowhere in the world one can go to escape it. But the weather is also somewhere; it always manifests in specific places. Now, however, something has changed. The same sociotechnical developments that have changed the climate have also in recent years changed how weather is experienced. Technologies of virtual mediation enable us in an instant to encounter the cumulative weight of the world’s weather. Our experience of weather increasingly becomes displaced, detached from its local place-markers. This weight of displaced weather is unbearable and undermines the role that emplaced weather fulfils in maintaining our sense of place, order, and well-being.