Jan 12: Always take the weather with you

"Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise" - Benjamin Franklin


Following on from yesterday's post about cloud spotting.

The weather is certainly amongst the most quotidian of experiences that we have. It is also one of the things that we are most likely to use as an opening conversational gambit if we encounter someone on our socially distanced and local exercise.... "ooh, chilly today isn't it..." "wet enough for you?" etc.

A famous quote from Dr Samuel Johnson sums this up:

"It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm."

Everything from the clothes that we wear, our travel plans, the food we buy and our ability to participate in our hobbies can be influenced by the prevailing weather conditions, and what we expect the weather to do over the next few hours.

One of the other quotidian elements here is the watching of weather forecasters at work on the TV. 

I have an added element of interest here as I used to teach one of them. Lucy Verasamy, who presents the weather at the end of the ITV Early Evening news (and at other times), and also worked on the ITV Racing team providing forecasts for horse racing events and course locations. She has also done some other TV related work, and I mentioned over on LivingGeography a recent climate change series she was recording.

I visited Lucy when she was working at Sky News and I was working for the Geographical Association, and spent a fascinating day at the newsroom and doing a green screen presentation.

Keep an eye on the weather today, as always. A few things you could do would be:
- sign up to the BBC Weather Watchers, and contribute a weather photo - they are often used in early evening forecasts
- test out a few weather apps to see which are the most accurate. I have Dark Sky, Rain Today, Met Office, BBC Weather on my phone currently, but the one I use the most is the Yr app from the Norwegian Met Office.

Image: Alan Parkinson, Summer thunderstorm near Sandy, Bedfordshire

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