Ariane Sherine

What a shower

In Stalin’s Russia they’d have been purged

issue 30 July 2016

The fact that we get sun when we expect hail and hail when we expect sun provides those of us who live in Britain with a handy subject to cover the most awkward of conversational lulls. The weather forms the backbone of our national discourse — perhaps because our own personal observations and doom-laden predictions are about as likely to be as accurate as the official forecasts.


Ariane Sherine and Lara Prendergast discuss why our weather forecasters just can’t get it right:


To look on the sunny side for a moment, perhaps this should cheer us. If we can’t predict what the weather is today, then perhaps — since we can do precious little about it — we should not be quite so alarmed about climate-change predictions. A government report released this month forecasts that conditions will become ever more extreme over the next 30 years.

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