Hurtling through the eternally uninhabitable frozen vacuum of the universe is a glowing blue-green planet painted with swirls of white and cool light grey. A nearby star radiating its light upon the planet paints shadows that are suggestive of depth and layering. Upon closer examination, these swirls appear to be hovering over the surface of the planet.

Look closer and there it is—enshrouding this planet is an astronomically paper-thin veneer of nitrogen, oxygen, and trace amounts of other gasses, including a weird one called ‘carbon’. This layer is so precious, so delicate. A moon-sized thumb could smudge it off with very little force and pressure.

There is a vapour-dance going on in this diaphanous shroud. The radiation of the neighbouring star heats the planet’s surface, causing sleepy hydrogen pairs bonded with oxygen atoms to excite and burst from solid mass as steam, rise, take flight, and ascend to heights where the warm blanket surrounding the planet thins and the impersonal cold of space starts to intrude.

Here, at this great height, dance partners seek out others just like them, because together they can keep warm enough to not freeze. Organized patterns of water droplets in constant motion accumulate and form swirling, spinning, yet cohesive bodies—clouds.

The mass of the planet below tugs at the scattering dance partners. They huddle in their suspended communion, but the persistent pull of the planet draws them away from the clouds, and it just keeps pulling. One by one, they start to disassemble. Once free from the collective of the cloud, gravity gives them a new name: water that drops, waterdrops.

And down, down they tumble. One, two, four, eight, then dozens, then by exponentially increasing orders of magnitude until there is a torrent of billions of drops falling back toward the home they left not long ago.

A young girl walks in her backyard in bare feet, the spring and density of the grass electrifies the sensitive soles of her feet while longer blades tickle the skin between her toes. It is already a very warm midsummer morning, the Sun has yet to reach its zenith in the sky. Then a lone, happy cloud occludes the sun’s light, and the girl looks up at this cloud, extends her arms, palms-upward, and yawns.

As her mouth opens, stretching her jaw muscles, a droplet of water that originated from the cloud splashes onto her tongue. Slight surprise rapidly turns into joy and she swallows the water drop with glee, inwardly congratulating herself for having caught such a fine drop.

In the next town over, a tired middle-aged man who worked half the night and through the morning steps out of the warehouse and begins his march home to a drink, or three, and then straight to bed for a few hours of oblivion.

The happy cloud that blessed the young girl has moved on and joined others like it, and together they’ve accumulated into something cumulus. They unleash a torrent of water drops, the first wave of which strikes the warehouse worker on his unprotected head. He curses the rain, reaches up, behind, and pulls his hood up over his head. Now covered in water, he thirsts only for the cheap blended whiskey that awaits him when he gets to the shelter of his studio apartment.

Zoom back up, out and away again. The blue-green planet is not supposed to be there. The universe consists almost completely of empty, freezing space. And circumscribing this planet is a precariously delicate layer of medium in which a phenomenon called ‘weather’ can exist. There, between the weather and the solid stuff of the planet, lifeforms observe, interact with, pass judgement on, and respond to the phenomenon of weather that surrounds them. There are many species that do the same, in their own fashion.

We can respond to a drop of rain with joy, or with a curse, or choose to not even respond to it at all. But how often do we stop and think about what it means that this thing called weather is all that stands between us and the endless frozen vacuum of the void beyond?

If my favourite type of weather isn’t the weather of the present moment, then I might want to stop what I’m doing, sit still, and meditate on the nearly impossible conditions that make being able to reflect on the current weather possible.

So yeah, today’s weather is my favourite. So is tomorrow’s.