The weather where you are

“‘Evenin’ all. Knackerthrasher of the Met here. I have to caution yew that I am about to issue yew with a severe weather warning. In short, for the next few days it’s going to be brass monkeys. Parky in the extreme. Yew have been warned. Mind how yew go”.

Weather affects everyone, but like most things these days, can be personalised. No longer does it have to consist simply of objective measurements of temperatures, barometric pressures, and wind speeds; no, it can be about you. Rather than it being 3 degrees above zero, add on the wind chill factor and it feels like 7 degrees below. That’s made the weather more subjective, more personal, more about how you feel. It’s you shivering at the bus stop on Monday morning. Brrrrr. Less about meteorology (whoa, science, long words, panic), more about you.

Forecasting may yet become even more personalised. I’m not up on such things but I wouldn’t be surprised if already there is a weather app that can be tweaked according to taste, educational level and individual requirements, so that Rebecc-ah from Pinn-ah can know that there is a chance of thund-ah in Dov-ah where her friend Gemm-ah lives, but it will become a little warm-ah in Doncast-ah where Tyl-ah lives; so that those who love to be offended can receive suitably offensive weather forecasts thus enabling them to claim compensation; and so that Mr Creosote can download details of his very own microclimate onto his waffair-thin smartphone.

As I say, I don’t really understand these things, but I do like watching the weather forecasts on the Beeb. John Hammond, solid, reliable, the archetypal weather forecaster. Not necessarily right, mind you, but believable. Jay Wynne, a thorough professional, who likes to forecast only fine, er, sunny, er, weather, which makes him feel good about it and you too, a truly wynne-wynne situation all round. Still probably wrong, though. Chris Fawkes, also excellent; they sometimes let him out on November the Fifth for a spot of pyrotechnical banter with a conniving newsreader. Stavros, brilliant, used to own a plant called Shirley when he was in ‘Kojak’. And I get so excited when you-know-who starts talking about warm fronts and tightly packed isobars.

They all have their own styles, and you will pick your own favourites. The only one I really can’t stand is Tittering Timmy (it’s probably not his real name), who knows you have something big planned for Saturday afternoon and it’s going to absolutely widdle down. Titter, titter. And he may even lie to you and tell you it’s going to be glorious. Titter, titter even more. Then there’s that strange little man who can hardly see over the bottom of the screen. I feel he’s been put on at the wrong scale and someone needs to Photoshop him. Not to mention the one who likes to personalise your weather by hovering over the map and offering suitably regional descriptions, a homely touch indeed. Gorblimey guv, it’s taters in the Mile End Road, and it be oo-arr in Zomerzet. There’ll be a wee drop of this here, a wee dram of that there, and during the wee wee hours it will be weeing down torrentially. It’s a dreich day in Dumbarton and Dumfries, and later on there’ll be a funny peculiar haar in the Firth of Forth. Which raises the question, why does Scotland have to have so much weather? If that woman with her cracked record about wanting a man date gets her way the weather forecast could be so much shorter. And incidentally, the weather today, mon, in Nyercassel-an-Tane, in tha Toon, is a lord av shate.

Then there’s the matter of “named storms”. This means that you can come home all bedraggled and declare “I sustained a considerable battering from Doris outside Sainsbury’s this morning”. Names are tricky beasts. Are we going to be sufficiently impressed by storms called Adrian, Rupert or Piers? I wonder. Ooh, that Julian, ooh, he’s such a bitch, blew my brolly inside out. Weather maps can be intriguing, too. Mostly, for obvious reasons, they pinpoint a handful of major cities and coastal resorts – London, Plymouth, Norwich, the inevitable Stornoway and Lerwick. If there’s a major sporting event, a highlighting of Aintree or Twickenham or Edgbaston is understandable. Occasionally, however, some mischievous presenter will select differently; not really obscure places like Yardley Gobion or Bagillt or Great Snoring, but those that are merely an odd choice – Nairn, Lampeter, Thetford, Dollis Hill, Ormskirk, Horsham. Probably an in-joke with his aunties, but you never know … it could be you. It could be the weather exactly where you are.

Another nod towards personalisation is the local regional forecast. Some of the local presenters are wonderful, like the aptronymic Sara Blizzard in the East Midlands, and the woman with the strangely placed lumps and bumps which get in the way of Market Harborough. Weather watchers and their photographs of the sky can bring in not just some natural beauty but a little unintentional surreality too: clouds over Wimbledon that can not be cirrus, some wet looking mackerel in Hull, a grim day in Grimsby, a dull day in Dulwich, a magnificent cunnilingus towering over Maidenhead sent in by weather watcher Ron Devious of Taplow …  Er. Excuse me a moment …

 
“Knackerthrasher of the Met here again. ‘Allo ‘allo ‘allo, what’s all this ‘ere then. I am arresting yew on suspicion of broadcasting a weather forecast of an indecent nature. ‘Evenin’ all”.