Guernsey Press

What would we do without the weather?

YOU know you’re getting on a bit when you become obsessed with the weather.

Published
A badly damaged Mini that was hit by a falling tree while parked near the junction of Rue de Pre and Park Street, St Peter Port, during the hurricane of 16 October 1987. (28411919)

There comes a point in time when it seems important to study the forecast intently, especially if you have particular plans for the following day, weekend or week. As a newly-dedicated weather watcher I’m still far from an expert when it comes to warm fronts and the prevailing wind but I do feel the need to keep cognisant of the climate.

The weather is perennially irresistible to the news agenda. The most, the least, the hottest, the coldest, the wettest, the driest – filling up needle time and column inches. Although, every time I hear a news intro along the lines of ‘Rain did not dampen the spirits of’ it leaves my own spirits positively drenched with despair at lazy journalism.

The weather industry also provides us with household names, the weathermen and women who become celebrities for telling us whether or not to put on our raincoats in the morning – think Ulrika Jonsson and Sian Lloyd – highly paid rainmakers of a different kind.

Some, like the now retired Michael Fish, of sports jacket and colourful tie fame, were more than a pretty face. Over a 30-year career he became the longest serving broadcast meteorologist in Britain.

We love it when weather people get it wrong and the appropriately named Fish probably takes the podium in that regard. He famously missed the storm of 1987, the biggest (see what I did there, Ed?) to hit the UK in 300 years, killing 19 people and causing devastation countrywide.

Forecaster Michael Fish famously missed the storm of 1987. (28411916)

Only the day before, he reassured a woman who had called the BBC asking if the forecast was anything to worry about. Yes, people actually did treat the BBC, and some perhaps still do, like an all-knowing Wizard of Oz.

At the time I was living in a bachelor pad close to the cliffs towards the far end of Jerbourg Road and working shifts on the sub-editors’ bench at the Guernsey Press. The storm had wreaked havoc across the island overnight. Boats were blown across roads, cars hurled into walls and scaffolding tumbled down.

In the morning it was a case of all hands to the pump to provide news coverage for the day’s paper. Many roads, including mine, were blocked by trees so the editor phoned newsroom colleagues asking them to cover their local area.

I woke with a start at the shrill ring of the landline telephone beside my bed. It was 7am.

‘Hello,’ I croaked.

It was the editor: ‘Morning Steve, we need you to take a look around your neighbourhood and phone in some copy about the impact of the storm, within the next hour.’

‘What storm?’

I’m not a particularly heavy sleeper but, having worked the duty editor late shift well into the evening before and all but completed the following day’s paper – most of which would now be undone – I was one of many who slept through the whole thing.

I went to the window and drew back the curtains. My view across the garden was blocked by a large tree which had been uprooted and toppled on its side, missing my flat by just a few feet but failing to disturb my post-shift shuteye.

It was with some disbelief that, on foot, I then surveyed the Jerbourg area, littered with trees and branches and with the added drama of a couple of runaway horses spooked by the storm.

When it comes to local weather forecasters, I want to pay my own tribute to the Guernsey Weather Fox. He is clearly very knowledgeable, yet he speaks our language. There’s no weather tech here, just an absolute understanding of what and why we want to know – will it be OK for a family barbecue or an organisation’s fundraising event, do I need to water the garden this evening, which beach should I go to and is the surf up? And, I don’t wish to tempt fate, but he is rarely wrong.

Above all, the weather is great for small talk, a friendly ‘Lovely day!’ or ‘Great weather for ducks’ exchanged in passing with an acquaintance or even a stranger.

But most of all it is a British peculiarity to complain about the weather.

When it hasn’t rained for several weeks, as in May this year, we grumble that the garden could really do with some rain, the car’s getting dusty and we go around huffing and puffing that it’s too hot. Then the first day it rains it’s as if we’ve suffered unprecedented precipitation for months on end and we can’t wait for the sun to come out again. We’re a bit like the father and mother in a meteorological three bears fairy tale. The weather’s never just right.

Then, there’s fog. But that frustrating topic should be reserved for a column of its own.

For now, I’m just going to take the advice of Australian rock band Crowded House: Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you.