This morning a friend of mine posted on social media a screenshot of the BBC weather app on his phone: hurricane-force winds for Sheffield apparently! He said he was bravely going out into the weather anyway.
It seems he wasn’t alone in receiving this information.
“The BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty asked the weather presenter Carol Kirkwood on air what was happening. “Lots of people are getting in touch this morning, as I’m sure you’ll be aware as well at the weather centre,” she said. “The BBC app is giving some rather confusing information. Can you explain it?”
Kirkwood replied: “It certainly is, we’re having a technical glitch at the moment. It’s showing wind speeds far too fast. In fact, hurricane strength, and of course that is not the case at all, so please do not be alarmed. We are, as you say, well aware of it and we are on it, we’re trying to fix it right now, so hopefully that will sort it out.””
Last night I saw a news broadcast where Joe Biden was reassuring people in Florida that systems were in place to help them as they faced the onslaught of Hurricane Milton. He urged them to ignore the stories being put out by Donald Trump that properties were being confiscated and that compensation and financial aid would be inadequate. Especially they should ignore stories that the Democrats were controlling the weather! What a ridiculous concept - government, or indeed anyone controlling the weather. We laughed!
And then you come across posts like this from a group that call themselves “Earthly Education”:
“Conspiracy theorists who keep saying there’s ‘NO WAY’ this hurricane could have intensified so much without some human cause are getting close to it …
We’ve been trying to tell you about the most important conspiracy in human history - Big Oil accepted climate science over 50 years ago, leaked documents show their own scientists forecast their product would cause catastrophe, and since then, Big Oil has been spreading lies to protect their products.
Climate change is terrifyingly real.”
Not exactly controlling the weather then, but definitely influencing it. And not just Democrats or whoever is in government. One reason given for the increased number of storms and hurricanes is the warming of the oceans. In fact some people are suggesting that we should name storms and hurricanes after the companies who cause them.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton may have caused slightly less damage than expected. That really remains to be seen. As for us, we have a bright, crisp autumn day so far. If it decides to rain, it will no doubt be when I go out to collect the smaller grandchildren from school this afternoon.
I have discovered a new professional group: socio-meteorologists. According to these people our perception of summer 2024 as rubbish is not strictly true (which I have been arguing all along because we have had some decent days from time to time - it’s just been a bit inconsistent) but in fact it’s been pretty average.
“There have been multiple heatwaves in recent years, including the unprecedented extreme heat in 2022 as well as the long, hot lockdown summer of 2020,” says socio-meteorologist, Helen Roberts. She says that two psychological effects, recency bias and the availability heuristic – in which we perceive things through the lens either of recent events or memories that spring readily to mind – “mean we get used to these extremes and then expect more of the same”.
(I googled “availability heuristic, by the way, and got this definition: The availability heuristic describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future.)
Apparently we also focus more on extremes than on averages. So we remember the fabulously long, hot summer of 1976 and, in our case, the snowy winters of the late 1970s when we were snowed in more than once. The average stuff does not bear comparison and so we feel vaguely disappointed.
And now it seems we can expect the tail end of Hurricane Kirk over the weekend and into next week. Chris Bulmer, the Met Office’s deputy chief meteorologist, said: “Kirk over the north Atlantic will lose its status as a hurricane early next week before being swept towards north-west Europe.
“The resulting low-pressure system will still have the potential to bring disruptive rain and winds to some areas, including parts of the UK, from the middle of next week. There remains much detail to work out on the exact track and timing of the system.”
That last sentence is telling: hose who supposedly “control” the weather have not clearly yet made up their minds.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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