ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book highlights how the relationships between climate and culture appear everywhere in daily life, in clothing, the built environment, in social memories of past events, in emotions, adaptation, fiction, and in narratives of blame. It focuses on to different forms of weather memory but also consider how those weather memories have been made. The book describes the people who lived through the summer of 1976 have tended to express enjoyment in remembering it, especially those who were children at the time or for whom the prolonged heat coincided with key life events such as marriage, childbirth, new jobs or the purchase of a new vehicle. It highlights the important role that key institutions, such as the church, have played in the immediate aftermath of extreme weather events and in the intergenerational commemoration of these events.
