Scots have more words for snow than the Eskimos!

THEY have spent centuries adapting to life in the frozen environment of the Arctic Circle.

But a new book reveals the Inuit people have fewer words for snow than Scots.

Scots use hundreds of words ranging from ‘feefle to ‘flindrikin’ to describe snow, while the Inuit people are believed to have only 50.

The book, produced by the Met Office, aims to answer hundreds of unusual trivia questions about the country’s weather.

In Very British Weather, it is also shows that each year enough rain falls on Scotland to fill Loch Ness 17 times over.

The Met Office has been gathering data on our weather since 1854 and Britons spend four and a half months of their lives just talking about it.

The Met Office, which originally only recorded conditions, began forecasting services after a devastating storm in the Irish Sea sank 133 ships, with the loss of 800 lives on October 25, 1859.

In a report, Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who headed the fledgeling department, claimed it could have predicted the tempest.

Among the facts the book turns up is an episode in 1830, when fresh herring rained down on fields on Islay. The likely explanation was that a waterspout or tornado crossing nearby sea had sucked up the fish before depositing them on the island.

In a study by the University of Glasgow, it emerged that Scots have more than 400 words to describe snow.

The book also found Cairngorm sees snow falling on average 76.2 days each year, making it the snowiest part of the UK

Eight out of the ten snowiest places in Britain are in Scotland. After Cairngorm come Baltasound and Fair Isle, both Shetland.

The book acknowledges a variety of Scots names for rain or wet weather in general. These include stoating, coming down in stair rods, smirr, fiss and drookit. The book also shows Scotland has the UK’s biggest ‘swing’ in temperature ever recorded.

On January 14, 1979, Lagganlia near Aviemore in Inverness-shire went from a temperature of -23.5C (-10.3F) to 6.6C (44F) in the space of 24 hours – a swing of 30.1C. The Highlands also registered the highest UK December temperature, on December 29 last year, in the middle of the night. At Achfary, in Sutherland, the mercury hit 18.7C (66F) at 2am.

And in spring this year, it was so sunny in Scotland that a Met Office instrument which records sunshine, the Y-Axis, stopped working when 600 hours of sunshine was reached.

Co-author Aidan McGivern said: ‘It was great fun doing the book. I have been a meteorologist for 13 years and I’m finding out new things every day. I loved the “raining fish” story and strides being made to discover how our lives are affected by space weather.’

In 2015, the Met Office began giving storms names to heighten public awareness about potential impacts of high winds, snow and rain on property and travel.

The book reveals that storms cannot be named after members of the Royal Family or politicians.

So there will be no ‘Storm Nicola’ or ‘Boris’, then.

Very British Weather is published by Ebury Press on October 15, £16.99 (hardback).