CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Playing with the weather
BILL KIRKMAN
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There are no absolutes with weather; it depends on how we deal with it.
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My own approach is to challenge the basic assumption that weather is good or bad.
Photo: AP
Rain or shine: Live it
Great scorn has been poured on a long-term weather forecast by the Meteorological Office which promised a good barbecue summer. In fact, the actual statement from the Met Office, in its seasonal forecast for the summer, issued in April, stated that t
here was “a 65 per cent probability of a warmer-than-average and near- or drier-than-average summer”. A news release accompanying that forecast stated: “The coming summer is ‘odds on for a barbecue summer’.”
During the past few weeks there has been a great deal of rain: hence the scorn. Hence also the somewhat tight-lipped statement from the Met Office that “At no time did the Met Office state that Summer 2009 would be hot and dry throughout or forecast a ‘scorcher’.”
Need to know
As everyone knows, the British are obsessed with the weather — and essentially never satisfied with it. If you want to open an animated conversation, you have only to assert that it is too hot or too cold, or too wet or too dry for the time of year (no matter what time of year it is), and you are set up for the next five minutes at least.
My own approach is to challenge the basic assumption that weather is good or bad. (That, incidentally, is a sure conversation stopper. I am clearly not playing the weather game by the rules.)
My starting point is twofold. First, there is nothing you can do about the weather. (Yes I do understand that in the long term our behaviour can influence climate change. I am talking tactically.) Secondly, whether weather is good or bad is not absolute. It depends on circumstances.
A farmer, for example, who has just planted seeds, will need rainfall to help them germinate. There is constant reminder of this in the richly fertile farm land around Cambridge, where even this year the rain has not been sufficient, and the crops are being watered. Come the time for harvesting grain, and the same farmer is hoping for a period of dry weather.
Move the focus to holidays, and the same principle applies. When we took a holiday recently in Northumberland, we were glad not to be drenched with rain, but we were also glad not to have very hot sunny weather, as we planned to walk over the beautiful countryside, and walking in extreme heat is not our idea of pleasure.
Change direction
Two days ago, to choose another example, we spent six hours on the river on our cabin cruiser. To be frank, if there had been heavy rainfall, we would have changed our plans. There are better things to do than travelling along with water both above and below.
In fact, for our purposes the weather on that day was perfect; pleasantly warm, not windy, and with sufficient cloud in the sky to ensure that we did not risk suffering from sunburn (or, for that matter, heat fatigue).
As I ponder this, I am reminded of a careers adviser colleague of mine, many years ago, at a time when there was much discussion about relevant, and irrelevant, university degrees. He told the story of two history graduates at his university, who graduated in the same year. One embarked on teacher training and became a school teacher. The other joined the Inland Revenue and became a tax inspector. Five years later, each wanted a change of direction. The tax inspector took a teacher training course and joined the teaching profession. His teacher contemporary joined the Inland Revenue as a late entrant. The question, my colleague asked, was: which one had the relevant degree? It neatly illustrated the point that circumstances must not be ignored.
In my more querulous moments I find myself getting irritated by what I see as the somewhat patronising assumptions made by weather forecasters. I want them to tell me, as accurately as they can, what the weather is going to be like. Is it going to rain or not?
Will it be hotter, or colder, than usual for the time of year? I can use this information to decide whether my tentative plans should be implemented or abandoned, to decide whether I need to take an umbrella with me. Those are my decisions, related to my current circumstances, and depending on those circumstances the same weather may be good or bad. As I am clearly becoming a grumpy old man, and as the presenters of the weather forecast on television and radio are a friendly lot, perhaps I should not allow my querulous moments to take over.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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