Shocking sight of sunshine sends humans tweeting
AFTER the winter we’ve just had, which seemed to last for just shy of a decade, one could be forgiven for forgetting what sunshine looks like in this country.
This week, the good people of Twitter certainly seemed to. As much of the country enjoyed clear skies and temperatures nudging through the teens on Thursday, the hashtag ‘‘#sunshine’’ became Britain’s most talked-about trending topic for most of the day.
Blinking into the light, the nation reacted as if it had made a new discovery. Even the verified account for English Heritage – normally such a bulwark of level-headedness – appeared thrown.
“We don’t want to alarm anyone but our sites appear to be covered by a bright, warm light that seems to be coming from the sky…” they tweeted, with a picture of a sun-drenched Stonehenge.
The next day, hype had turned to utter hysteria. “Britain to BAKE in 15C today as temperatures SKYROCKET across the country,” reported one newspaper, inadvertently confirming it has a poor grasp of baking and rocket science.
It really happened, though – we did enjoy the hottest day of the year so far. Thanks to a charitable jet stream that pushed warmer air from Spain into northern Europe, the long-awaited arrival of the season we once called spring arrived with some milder weather this week – and it ought to continue (albeit with intermittent rain showers for the unlucky) today and tomorrow.
And should those balmy conditions lurk into next week, there could be a frenzy of flowering outside your windows.
Many plants and trees that would normally have burst into life in a normal year, from the alders to those final shy daffodils, may well seize their moment and burst into character.
Guy Kelly