Looks like rain? At least it’s not a serial killer on the loose…

Can it really be that people get more depressed by poor weather than reports of a killer on the loose? Or that a cold snap brings the national mood almost as low as a terrorist attack?

If an analysis of 3.5 billion social media posts is to be trusted, then, yes.

Then again, this collective sentiment was gathered from US forums, which may or may not be run from Russia, so best take it with a pinch of bread and salt.

So what does this tell us about mankind? My interpretation is that there’s something reassuringly Pooterish about the way in which we respond to discombobulating events outside our front door. An armed felon is catastrophic, but only if he gets up close and personal. An unseasonably rainy Saturday, however, can ruin weddings, spoil sporting events and put paid to countless barbecues.

Here in Britain, where the weather is as wildly unpredictable as our rail travel, it’s a standard – not to say mandatory – conversational topic, even if Oscar Wilde really did say it represented “the last refuge of the unimaginative”.

But surely it’s better to be unimaginative than kept awake at night because of a serial killer out there

somewhere? Getting aerated about the spectre of frost on the runner beans seems eminently more sensible and conducive to good mental health than harmful Hieronymus Bosch imaginings.

Repeated studies have shown humans have a fundamental optimism bias, much as the glass half-empty brigade would have us believe otherwise.

It’s why we buy lottery tickets instead of investing in pensions, get married despite a 42 per chance of divorce, and pack just-in-case sunscreen for summer holidays in Wales.

Is it really, then, any surprise that bright weather helps us to look on the bright side? The brain produces more of the mood-lifting chemical serotonin on sunny days than on darker ones, so no wonder grey skies bring us down.

Never a truer word on our climate was spoken than those expressed by comedian Hugh Dennis in the voice of a BBC newsreader. “Scientists have finally explained why we’ve been enduring this rather long spell of disappointing weather. Apparently… we live in Britain.”