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Who you gonna call♫…NOT the Weatherman
Why...
Do we bother with weather forecasts? If ever a group of people would starve to death if they were paid on performance it’s the weathermen. In the UK the forecast is either… ‘Sunny with cloudy spells and occasional rain’. Well excuse me, but apart from adding a plague of locusts and blizzards that describes every kind of possible permutation you can get. That’s not a weather forecast, that’s weather hedge betting. It covers all the bases and is as much use as a rubber hammer Or You download an app with an hour by hour breakdown that changes more often than Miley Cyrus at an MTV Award ceremony. Earlier this month I was going to Goodwood for their annual three day extravaganza of classic cars and racing called the Goodwood Revival. It lasted from a Friday to Sunday. On Thursday there were dire predictions of fire and brimstone (OK rain) all day Saturday and Sunday but Friday would be fine. Needless to say it rained Friday evening but was sunny for the rest of the week-end. I would do better peering at the entrails of a chicken than use App mumbo-jumbo! How is it that a small island that could be carpeted in an afternoon has such unpredictable weather but when you go to Europe or the United States weather over vast distances can be predicted with reasonable success? Predicting weather is essential to sailors so how we ever became a seafaring nation is beyond me. Perhaps that’s why they took along a parrot to listen to what it had to say? I am told that you can convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit by counting the number of chirrups in 14 seconds then adding 40 to get the temperature! Either of those animals seem more reliable than depending on some presenter with bad hair and worse clothes pointing at a chart that will be as close to the truth as a candidate’s promises if elected President.
...and another thing
The weather is all about patterns. It’s not that I am a climate change denier, it’s just the evidence from people whose business it is, change direction faster than a weathervane in a hurricane.
‘2015 British summer was the coldest in three years. Despite record highs in July, the average UK temperature for summer was just 57F or 13.9C after chilly and unsettled August.’
And yet….
‘Britain will have more hotter, drier summers due to climate change’, Met Office says.’
Actually if I really believed carbon emissions led to hotter weather I’d be tempted to leave my car running all the time. All we get here in the UK is global drizzle. We need to turn the ozone deficiency level up to 11 (thank you Spinal Tap) so at least I have an excuse to break out the Hawaiian Tropic sun cream once in a while.
...and another thing
Sun creams appear to have as close a relationship to facts as weathermen!
‘Laboratory tests found that products sold under the Boots Soltan and Hawaiian Tropic brands offered only two-thirds of the sun protection stated on the label.
So now not only do I not know whether to pull on galoshes and a rain hat or ‘budgie smuggler’ swimming trunks and a grin, I also don’t know if acid rain will melt my umbrella or the sun protection cream fast track me to a melanoma!
And that’s why the British are obsessed by weather…
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Ha Ha ….that was me today expecting blue skies and sunshine not grey skies and rain so our epic exercising in the park was cancelled!