If the weather is reliably forecast, civil discourse will peter out
Samuel Johnson observed that, “When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.” Two-and-a-half centuries later, we are still taking refuge in the state of the weather when it comes to making small talk. But the vagaries of sun, rain and wind may not be available as a social lubricant for very much longer.
Fifty years ago, weather forecasts were reliable only to a couple of days; currently meteorologists can predict with fair precision the general pattern of weather a week or so ahead. Even so, the first act on waking of anyone with things to do outdoors – from farming to hanging out the washing – is to look out of the window.
But a 15-year research programme, launched by Reading University, the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, aims to make accurate monthly weather forecasts.
The goal is not to predict whether a particular day will offer cheerful weather in a month’s time for the wedding or the washday, but as the climate becomes more extreme, better forecasting will play an important role in mitigating the effects on lives and livelihoods of floods, drought and storms.
Dr Johnson thought the study of “the present state of the skies, and of the earth… on which millions depend for the necessaries of life” a nobler and more interesting pursuit than following news, politics or the financial markets. But he briskly dismissed the idea that our mood – still less our national character – might be shaped by changes in barometric pressure.
Yet neither Dr Johnson’s thunderous denunciations of weather-related superstition, nor the scientific rigour of the Met Office, have succeeded in eradicating our romantic preoccupation with our unpredictable island climate. Chaucer’s April showers, King Lear’s thunderstorms and Dickens’s fog are ubiquitous presences in our national psyche.
Confirmed landlubbers cherish the shipping forecast as a lullaby of the wind and waves, while the most resolute 21st-century urbanite knows that a red sky at night presages a fine day (a meteorological observation of biblical antiquity).
Even the old saw about St Swithin’s Day, July 15, when the weather – rain or shine – was traditionally supposed to remain unchanged for the next 40 days, has been resurrected by the hit Netflix romcom, One Day, which tracks the hapless lovers’ annual encounters on that particular day.
Fifteen years from now, will the eerie accuracy of forecasting deprive us of such gentle conversational gambits as the state of the weather? Perhaps not: in a world where opinions are as combustible as tinder, the outlook – moderate or good, with occasional fog patches – is the one thing we can mostly agree on.
Several Janets, numerous Alans, some Margarets and a lone Hilda have written to The Telegraph, bemoaning the fact that they (or rather their names) are in danger of becoming extinct. I share their chagrin: neither Jane, nor Elizabeth (my middle name) appears on a list of the 100 most popular names for 2023.
But all fashion is cyclical, and the current generation of parents are choosing names for their offspring (Archie Mountbattenwindsor; Boris and Carrie Johnson’s Wilfred and Frank) that even our grandparents might have considered obsolete.
A generation hence, those Archies and Wilfreds may think Janet and Alan the last word in babynaming chic.