In chapter 7 in To Kill a Mockingbird, what connections can you make concerning the weather and culture in Maycomb?

Here's the passage from Chapter 7 where the narrator mentions the weather:

"There are no clearly defined seasons in South Alabama; summer drifts into autumn, and autumn is sometimes never followed by winter, but turns to a days-old spring that melts into summer again. That fall was a long one, hardly cool enough for a light jacket."

We know that Maycomb culture moves slowly and is old-fashioned, to the extent where you'd say, "Yeah, nothing EVER changes in Maycomb." Folks have been doing the same thing there, generation after generation. The same traditions, the expectations just continue there as if time is standing still in the town.

That's exactly the feeling that we get when we read this weather description from Chapter 7. Time drifts by without any clear, regular changes that we expect in most other places. Perhaps the rest of the country has moved into a chilly winter (or, pushing that idea of change further, perhaps the rest of the country is making technological and social advances) while Maycomb isn't.

Even though it might seem boring when the narrator starts talking about the weather, it's always a good idea to pay attention to those descriptions instead of skipping past them to get to the action and dialogue of the story. Those descriptions of the weather can play an important role in establishing theme, tone, mood, setting, symbolism, and more. For a full discussion of this concept, with examples, check out Thomas C. Foster's book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, specifically "Chapter 10: It's More Than Just Rain or Snow."