Why outlook is dreich for weather forecasts

FOR a country obsessed with the weather, it is not surprising that Scotland has its own whimsical terms to describe various meteorological conditions.

Whether it’s ‘dreich’, ‘pure Baltic’ or leaves you ‘drookit’, the Met Office has announced it will consider using regional slang in its local broadcasts.

The national weather service is introducing a scheme that could incorporate weather idioms to make bulletins simpler and more accessible to viewers.

It is launching an appeal for the British people to submit their local weather terms and words so they can create a glossary to be used in regional forecasts.

It could lead to forecasters in Scotland being able to employ words such as ‘dreich’ and ‘drookit’ while describing the country’s rainy spells, while ‘haar’ could be used to predict misty weather.

The report is in response to a survey of 2,000 people, conducted by Vital last month, which found disparities between how people across the UK describe the weather.

It found more than half of people in the Black Country reported that they use ‘bucketing’ to describe heavy rain, whereas six in ten people in Leeds and Newcastle would say ‘chucking it down’ instead.

Londoners prefer to say ‘caning it’, while those in Birmingham and Bristol use ‘tipping it down’.

Overall, ‘pouring’ was the most popular term nationally.

Derrick Ryall, head of public weather service at the Met Office, said: ‘The range of slang for rain alone demonstrates the breadth and diversity of the English language and the varying terminology used across different parts of the UK.

‘As the UK’s national weather service, we’re always looking to improve the way weather forecasts are communicated, to make them as useful as possible and increase their understanding. Ultimately we hope to use the insights from our research to tap into local dialects and vocabulary to make it easier for people across the UK to understand the forecast and make informed decisions based on it.’

The survey also found two-fifths of people living in London described temperatures of 15C (59F) in January as cold, but threequarters of those in East Anglia, Wales and South-West England thought it was warm.

It also revealed that respondents struggled to interpret the weather symbols. More than half of those who took part in the survey wrongly interpreted the sun symbol – which indicates bright, clear skies – but suggesting that it meant the weather was hot or warm outside.

Only 14 per cent were able to identify the symbol for sleet, while 48 per cent were unsure which icon depicts intermittent rain.

In light of the survey, the Met Office has launched a project today asking people across the UK to tweet a description of the weather where they are at that moment in three words, using the hashtag #3wordweather.

The information gathered from this will be used to compare regional phrases used across the UK to see if there are more comprehensible ways to express the forecast.

‘We hope to tap into local dialects’