What a shower

The fact that we get sun when we expect hail and hail when we expect sun provides those of us who live in Britain with a handy subject to cover the most awkward of conversational lulls. The weather forms the backbone of our national discourse — perhaps because our own personal observations and doom-laden predictions are about as likely to be as accurate as the official forecasts.

Ariane Sherine and Lara Prendergast discuss why our weather forecasters just can’t get it right:

To look on the sunny side for a moment, perhaps this should cheer us. If we can’t predict what the weather is today, then perhaps — since we can do precious little about it — we should not be quite so alarmed about climate-change predictions. A government report released this month forecasts that conditions will become ever more extreme over the next 30 years. The Climate Change Risk Assessment warned that UK temperatures could rise as high as 48°C during the summer, and that dry spells could last for years, causing wildfires and water shortages. Droughts in countries close to the equator could result in more migration to Britain, while whole wildlife species might be destroyed.

Hopefully, the CCRA’s predictions will soon prove as accurate as the rest of our weather forecasts. A new Swedish app called Climendo contrasts the predictions of 10,000 weather stations and rates how accurate they are — and has revealed that American and European forecasters predicted British weather with greater precision than the Met Office last month. The British service lost its contract with the BBC last year due to an EU directive which stated that the broadcaster legally had to put its weather contracts out to tender. Perplexingly, the Met Office still provides the majority of the data communicated by the new service provider, acting as an unacknowledged middle man.