The Weather Museum

A memory of winter.

The sign was bright, clean, and sleek with government optimism:

THE WEATHER MUSEUM

Interactive Learning for a Changing Climate

There were families on the steps. A man with a clipboard waved people through. Admission was free. Inside, everything was white. Panels curved like icebergs, though there were no icebergs in the exhibits. Light pulsed gently from the floor, shifting in waves, like shallow water under glass. The air was cool but dry, and carried the scent of sanitised vanilla.

I rubbed my fingers together absently, as if to chase a memory of warmth. Once, my skin cracked in winter: raw pink crescents lining each knuckle. I remember waiting for the school bus with my navy sleeves pulled over my fists, steaming breath catching in the knit.

The voices of other visitors reached me only as murmurs, softened by some engineered acoustic. I moved slowly. There were zones: The Burn Years, Coastal Retreat, Water Efficiency Now, Solar Futures. Each had its own glowing touchscreen, voiceover, and looping animation.

A disembodied voice followed me, narrating in glossy, softened tones. One panel showed a cartoon child in shorts and sunglasses looking up at a bare tree. “In some parts of the world” the voice chirped, “trees used to shed their leaves!” The child tilted its head. “But now they’re smarter.” “That’s more efficient” the narrator agreed.

I kept walking. The corridor marked Historic Extremes narrowed slightly as I entered. Images flicked past at regular intervals: dust storms swallowing motorways; hurricane footage overlaid with rescue statistics; a flooded subway where plastic bags floated like jellyfish.

I turned a corner into a smaller exhibit titled:

Climate Memory: Preserved Artefacts from a Transitional Era

The lighting dimmed as I stepped through. Thin beams traced the contours of glass display cases arranged in tidy rows. The silence here felt deeper and more intentional. The air was slightly denser: cooled, then recirculated. The kind of temperature meant to preserve, rather than comfort.

The first case held a cracked mercury thermometer laid on a square of felt. The column inside had split. Tiny globes of mercury lined the crack, held in stasis as if time had cooled and crystallised. I remembered one like it, nailed to the side of a window frame. I used to watch the red line climb or fall, willing it to change before school.

Next to it: a pair of wraparound sunglasses, scratched along one lens. The kind sold cheap in supermarkets and petrol stations, stacked in rotating wire racks near the tills. A white sticker was still attached to the side arm. The text had faded to grey.

I moved to the next row. There: a small plastic snow globe, half-faded. The kind that used to be sold in gift shops. Inside, a model of a tree and a lamppost. The snow had yellowed into a dirty halo around the base. Someone once shook it, years ago, maybe, and then never again.

Beside it: a pair of gloves, child-sized. Acrylic. Pale grey. The wrists had pilled. A loop of thread trailed from the left cuff. I stared at them. I could feel their shape even now: the friction of knit against damp skin, the way snow clung to the fibres until your fingers burned.

Then the jacket. Pale blue. Synthetic. Puffy, but slightly deflated where time had pressed it flat. The hood was trimmed in a thin ring of faux fur, matted at the edge. It had a faint mark on the chest. It might have been grease or ink; I couldn’t tell.

It looked exactly like mine. Exactly. As if the memory had been lifted from my body and placed behind glass. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

The plaque read: Protective clothing used during early erratic weather events. Common during pre-stabilisation decades. Lined for insulation. There was no mention of snow, or of the thousand tiny decisions that went into preparing for it: how many layers, which shoes, how to judge when to leave the house.

A small voice to my left said, “Is that a snow coat?”

I turned. A girl, maybe six, stood with her hand pressed to the glass, leaving fogged stars where her fingertips rested.

Her mother knelt beside her. “No, darling” she said softly, pulling the girl’s hand away. “That’s just for wind.”

The girl frowned. “But it looks like the one from the book. The one with the snow animals.”

Her mother’s smile was too quick. “Books don’t always get it right, sweetie. They’re just stories.”

“But they were wearing boots.”

“Come on now. Let’s not get stuck”, the mother said, voice tightening.

The girl didn’t move: “It looks warm.”

The mother took her hand more firmly this time. “We don’t need warm like that anymore.” They moved on. I stayed a moment longer. The silence where winter should have been had presence, like the inside of a mitten warmed by skin.

Outside, the light was hard and flat. The sky had no colour or depth. Children clustered near a water sculpture. When the mist touched them, it evaporated instantly. One boy raised his hand into the arc of spray. When the droplets struck his skin, he flinched, as if surprised.

I drifted. The streets felt pale. Edgeless. Shopfronts rotated their offers in slow, perfect cycles: smart fibres, nutrient blocks, thermal-regulated boots. The world updated in soft, looping algorithms. I missed the seasonal displays. I wasn’t sure what else I’d already lost.

A tree stood at the corner. Real, but too precise. Its bark gleamed faintly. The leaves were perfect, static, bright as plastic. I passed a brick wall where someone had written a single word in chalk:

January.

It was already smudging, the white dust streaking down toward the pavement like meltwater. January, I thought. I wasn’t supposed to remember it. I thought of snow. The gloves. The coat. It looks warm, the girl had said. It did. It was. I held that sentence like a match in the dark, and I didn’t let it go.

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