One day in 2020, close to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Matt Rickett realized he was checking weather apps all the time. He immediately understood why: “Everything felt so unpredictable, so out of control,” he says. “Just knowing that something was going to happen, tomorrow, that people said was gonna happen, was reassuring.”
The next year Rickett, who lives in Austin, Texas, decided to stop using social media: “I didn’t like the control it had over my life,” he says. “But I still had the energy, the need to look at my phone, for some reason. So I got even more into weather.”